Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!: Amour (2012) - Tender love, unstoppable death in Haneke's pictures

10/10/2013

Amour (2012) - Tender love, unstoppable death in Haneke's pictures

♥♥♥♥♥

+ Best French Movie of the Year

An almost painfully intimate moment between the film's central aging couple is used on this poster for Michael Haneke's Amour

An old married, French couple. One day, the woman loses the ability to move in her one side. Her health rapidly deteriorates, while her husband cares for her until the last breath.

Amour is written and directed by great German filmmaker Michael Haneke (The Seventh Continent/Der Siebente Kontinent (1989)). Amour is French for 'love'.

Emmanuelle Riva's (Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959) performance as the ailing old woman, who loses control of her faculties, is taboo-breaking and incredible, and the intimacy and realism of the loving tragedy and the couple's relation is infectious in a surreptitious manner, seeming to crawl under your skin without you noticing. - Or, more accurately, you notice its doing so by the intense unpleasantness that you experience from being put expertly in their shoes, a weight that is making some term the film unbearable.
The very intense journey towards inevitable death in Amour is long-winded and truly awful to be on, and the love between the two so beautiful that the film is very nearly unbearable, - which could be called a trademark for all of Haneke's films. This one ranks among his finest.

2012 in films - according to Film Excess
2007 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]

Funny Games (2007) - Haneke recreates his strong critique of movie violence consumption for the American audience

Top 10: Best drama-thrillers reviewed by Film Excess to date

2005 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess
Hidden/Caché (2005) - Haneke's slick, cold surveillance drama-thriller

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 8.9 mil. $
Box office: 29.6 mil. $
= Box office success (returned 3.32 times its cost)

[Amour premiered 20 May (Cannes Film Festival, in competition) and runs 127 minutes. Haneke went through a writer's block during his making the screenplay, which he wrote specifically with Jean-Louis Trintignant (L'Été Prochain (1985)). Trintignant broke his prior 14 years of retirement to appear in the film. It was mostly inspired by the suicide of Haneke's own rheumatism-plagued 90 year-old aunt. Shooting took place from February - April 2011 in France, including Paris. The film opened #37 to a 68k $ first weekend in 3 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #19 and in 333 theaters (different weeks), grossing 6.7 mil. $ (22.6 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were France with 4.2 mil. $ (14.2 %) and the Netherlands with 2.2 mil. $ (7.4 %). The film was nominated for 5 Oscars, winning 1, for Best Foreign Language Film. It lost Best Picture to Argo, Actress (Riva) to Jennifer Lawrence in Silver Linings Playbook, Director to Ang Lee for Life of Pi and Original Screenplay to Quentin Tarantino for Django Unchained. It also won a Golden Globe, 2/4 BAFTA nominations, the Palme d'Or in Cannes, 5/10 César award nominations, a David di Donatello award, 4/6 European Film award nominations, an Independent Spirit award, a National Board of Review award and several other honors. Roger Ebert gave the film a 4/4 star review, translating to a notch over this one. Haneke returned with Così fan Tutte (2013, TV movie) and theatrically with Happy End (2017). Riva returned in A Greek Type of Problem/Tu Honoreras ta Mère et ta Mère (2012); Trintignant in Happy End (2017). Amour is certified fresh at 93 % with an 8.70/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Amour?

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Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Roger Corman has passed away

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

William Friedkin has died

Born in Chicago, Friedkin accrued TV credits prior to his advance to the big screen as the director of Good TImes (1967), The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970) before his major breakthrough, The French Connection (1971), for which he won his only Oscar. He followed it up with the even bigger smash, The Exorcist (1973), arguably the best horror film of all time, for which he was Oscar-nominated. Later credits include Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Rampage (1987), Rules of Engagement (2000), Killer Joe (2011) and The Devil and Father Amorth (2017, documentary). Friedkin passed away at age 87. R.I.P.

Louise Fletcher has passed away

Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Jean-Luc Godard has passed away

Born in Paris, France, Godard lived much of his life in Switzerland. He wrote for French film criticism magazine Cahiers du Cinema and became foundational for the New French Wave that inspired new waves in scores of other countries across the world with his Breathless (1960). Later credits include A Woman Is A Woman (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Petit Soldat (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Weekend (1967), Every Man for Himself (1980), King Lear (1987), Century of Cinema (1995, documentary), Goodbye to Language (2014) and many more. Godard died of assisted suicide at age 91. R.I.P.

Wolfgang Petersen has died

James Caan has died

Caan was born the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany in New York. He got his start on TV in the early 1960s. His credits include El Dorado (1966), The Rain People (1969), Brian's Song (1971, TV movie), The Godfather (1972), - for which he earned his only Oscar nomination, - Slither (1973), The Gambler (1974), Funny Lady (1975), Rollerball (1975), Silent Movie (1976), Hide in Plain Sight (1980), - the only film he also directed, - Thief (1981), Misery (1990), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Bottle Rocket (1996), Eraser (1996), Dogville (2003), Elf (2003), Las Vegas (2003-07), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and many more. Caan passed away at age 82. R.I.P.

Jean-Louis Trintignant has died

Born in Vaucluse, France, Trintignant's theatrical debut as an actor was in If All the Guys in the World... (1955). Later credits include ...And God Created Woman (1956), The Seven Deadly Sins (1961), Inferno (1964), A Man and A Woman (1966), My Love, My Love (1967), A Man to Kill (1967), The Great Silence (1968), Z (1969), The Assassination (1972), Three Colors: Red (1994), Amour (2012), Happy End (2017) and many more. He also wrote and directed two films in the 1970s. Trintignant passed away at age 91. R.I.P.

Ray Liotta has died

Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

Born in Ohio, Hall didn't start acting until he was 30. His long list of credits include Zabriskie Point (1970), Miami Vice (1987, TV-series), Midnight Run (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Cheers (1993, TV-series), Hard Eight (1996), The Rock (1996), Air Force One (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), Seinfeld (1991-98), Rush Hour (1998), The Insider (1999), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Bruce Almighty (2003), Dogville (2003), The Zodiac (2005), Zodiac (2007), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2004-09), Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), Modern Family (2011-12) and many more. Hall passed away at age 90. R.I.P.

Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!

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10/10/2013

Amour (2012) - Tender love, unstoppable death in Haneke's pictures

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