1. nathanroberts

   10

   Ultimate cinematic perfection ! this film is the symbol of life and love. Not only is it beautifully crafted but the acting is impeccable highlighting the honest and true nature of the screenplay, in my eyes film can get no better .
   Haneke is the best director of 2012 and produced the best film too.… Expand

   • Helpful? 2 of 2 users said Yes.
2. NedRyerson1

   8

   Amour is a hard to follow film, but it is one of the most beautiful that I have ever seen. It is very touching and also rough, because it is noticeable the point that true love can reach. The movie portrayed an old woman with hemiplegia cause by a vascular accident with progressive decrease of brain activity and the future of the marriage will fall to her husband. What this picture is doing, is trying to figure out what is love, using apart from the plot, the script, the cameras and the performances. That is why the movie is so slow, with static camera movements and with people that evaluate what they are doing, because you cannot rush love, it is about patience and understanding. Everything in the film is well prepared, Michael Haneke definitely did an excellent job in directing and the protagonist couple is just brilliant, but I think is more Jean-Louis Trintignant than Emmanuelle Riva.… Expand

   • Helpful? 2 of 2 users said Yes.
3. heyitsmegrif4

   5

   Amour features fine actors doing their best, but they also have to give performances that come from boring and never compelling characters. The story is simple and features plot points that aren't needed or particularly make sense. An original score would have been nice to hear because I was bored most of the time with it featuring long quiet scenes with no dialogue. Michael Haneke's Amour is a boring and undeniably pretty drama that manages to be forgettable. I give this movie 58%.… Expand

   • Helpful? 1 of 2 users said Yes.
4. jhep

   1

   It’s alarming to see how savvy some filmmakers are becoming at knowing just what material and what “spin” will gain them big critical jackpotsckpots and festival jury prizes. "Amour" is a case in point and suggests that the line between demographic-massaging advertising agencies and shrewd, cachet-hunting filmmakers is diminishing at an alarming rate. The film is basically a genteel “infomercial” that argues the case for euthanasia; it's an highly aggressive, in-your-face exercise and a very ONE-NOTE, highly aggressive, in-your-face exercise..........What it also has “going for it” in some circles at any rate- is the Jerry Springer-like touch of casting two well known stars of yesteryear, now in their 80s, in the lead roles. This brings an eerie Reality TV touch to the proceedings and something of a “frisson nouveau” to your card-carrying film buff audience (the demographic-massaging angle) Think how much, by way of comparison, the casting two relative unknowns would have affected the film’s reception...... In Teen Speak it would have been …..“B-O-R-R-R-I-N-G !!!”
   
   Jean-Louis Trintignant in particular struggles to breath life into the sparse characterization that writer/director Haneke has provided for him. However his efforts are in vain, for the forces of “infomercial-hood” are aligned against him here and (even more artistically crippling) Haneke’s somewhat gleeful penchant for the morbid. This latter holds sway as his camera zooms in to capture every detail of the physical and mental disintegration of Trintignant‘s wife (the now 85-year-old star of "Hiroshima Mon Amour" Emmanuelle Riva.) Indeed, Riva’s character soon becomes a sort of laboratory specimen that Haneke is studying intently under the microscope “I wonder what will “go” next he seems to be asking himself, pencil in hand with the result that The Wife (which is the sort of generic entity that Riva is finally reduced to) ends up becoming disconcertingly like that giant bug that Gregor Samsa turns into in Kafka’s "The Metamorphosis" By contrast, one wonders what Jean Renoir or Douglas Sirk would have done with this material. The fact that Riva’s character is not particularly sympathetic to begin with only adds to the uneasiness- indeed, queasiness- we end up experiencing as we’re invited to observe the spectacle of her relentless undoing....... Sad to say, by that point in the film either this latter studying-the-bug-under-the-microscope sensation or else flat out boredom seem to be our only options. "Amour" is an award-winning and highly pretentious film and the two go together much too often for comfort these days.… Expand

   • Helpful? 0 of 0 users said Yes.

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