1. orsonmcnab

   Feb 13, 2013

   10

   Amour is a formal masterpiece, which is not to say it isn't also a transporting cinematic experience. The characters are beautifully drawn and create empathy in the audience without resorting to banal cliches. Brilliant.… Expand

   • 0 of 0 users found this helpful
2. UtopianStuff

   Jul 3, 2013

   10

   The story is so masterfully told, it's not even funny. It's heartbreaking, depressing, beautiful and lovely. It's told in the most stylish of ways and it's just masterful. Its beautifully crafted, and radiantly acted.… Expand

   • 0 of 0 users found this helpful
3. nathanroberts

   Jan 17, 2013

   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

   • 3 of 3 users found this helpful
4. GreatMartin

   Feb 6, 2013

   9

   In a perfect world Emmanuelle Riva would win the Oscar for Best Actress but then, in a perfect world, her co-star Jean-Louis Trintignant would at least have received a nomination for Best Actor and he didn’t. In “Amour”, the movie they costar in, they are not actors creating roles but real people you believe in, understand, feel for and identify with, no matter your age.
   
   “Amour” is a mass of contradictions showing all sides of life and love and that neither life or love, or both, mean ‘happily ever after’. The film is a depressing one but, at the same time, shows you how two people can love each other without saying the words. We know how the movie will end because it starts with the police breaking into an apartment and finding Anne, (Emmanuelle Riva) dead in bed surrounded by flowers. After that the title is announced, the credits start and the next scene shows Anne and Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant), retired music teachers, at a concert given by a former student and then the following morning, when, at the breakfast table, she starts staring off into space and suffers a stroke caused by a blocked carotid artery .
   
   The screenplay by Michael Haneke, who also directed, tells the story from the male point of view when half of a devoted team becomes a caretaker and watches the partner he has loved for so long deteriorate. At first he tries to handle it alone but it becomes too much and he hires two nurses but finds one treating his wife like a baby and taking away her dignity so with much rage showing in his eyes and controlled voice he tells her to get out. Their daughter Eva (Isabelle Huppert) lives overseas, very much involved with tensions between her and her husband, and has drifted from her parents though she remembers walking in on them when she was young and they were having sex, making love and enjoying it closing out the rest of the world, including her.
   
   Watching Riva and Trintignant expressing love with touches, looks, smiles and memories makes you forget you are watching a movie with actors being told where to stand and what to say. You feel you are looking into a world very few couples ever experience and the consequences of life no matter how much you love someone.
   
   “Amour” is a very slow moving movie but every moment counts and you get so caught up with the couple there are two points that you will involuntarily gasp as the whole audience does and when the movie ends you want it to go on. The ending caused many controversies between moviegoers as they walked out of the auditorium.
   
   This is a special love story showing what can happen at the end rather than at the beginning of mating for life, for ‘better or worse’.
   
   A MUST SEE MOVIE--HOPEFULLY WILL WIN OSCAR FOR BEST FOREIGN MOVIE!… Expand

   • 0 of 1 users found this helpful
5. fredphoesh

   Jan 23, 2013

   8

   This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. This is a fantastic and powerful movie... amazing performances, unrelenting realism... and then comes the ending. I REALLY DISLIKED the way it ended/began and think it undermined the integrity of the film. It was uncharacteristically sentimental. My guess is this was done to give the wider audience a slightly nicer-than-bleak tone? Why else would the director want us to believe that after he (presumably) kills himself (what on earth happens to his body???) the couple are re-united in the "afterlife". Hmmm. Sweet, but irrelevant to the story and superstitious speculation at best. The missing body, or the fact it was not alluded to at the start of the movie when her body is found, seems like an unnecessary and contrived ploy "to make us wonder", debate the ending etc... In this way it is contrived, perhaps a marketing department idea to create a "hook" for cinema goers to debate and therefore promote the movie. This missing body anomaly, and the fact that we are given the "feel good" token at the end seems entirely inconsistent with the rest of the movie - which is so beautifully real. So the ending (beginning) is really poor and somewhat spoils what would have been a masterpiece.… Expand

   • 0 of 1 users found this helpful
6. cinemaquote

   Jan 18, 2013

   7

   yes haneke is a stern and grand director, yes this movie is over hyped, yet... it is a very poignant story. what struck me the most was to watch riva and trintignant 50 or more years after their breakthrough roles and find them so powerful even if remote from the image they portrayed then. huppert is a surprise in every sense. the confined imagery, the apartment, the love story will indeed be iconic.… Expand

   • 0 of 1 users found this helpful
7. Nazgulero

   Jul 14, 2013

   0

   Sweet Jesus, the only one that deserves an award is the audience, and being able to sit through this without...falling........asleeeeeppppp....
   This movie is completely lifeless, void of any dynamic, the characters are far more boring than anyone can ever be in real life, and you will have a hard time not wishing for them to just die so the movie can end. I am not sure who exactly is sitting on that Cannes jury, but they seem to have forgotten that the one main element that makes a movie good is whether or not the audience is entertained.… Expand

   • 0 of 4 users found this helpful

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