Love
Amour

In 2012’s Palm d'Or winner, Michael Haneke (Caché, The Piano Teacher, Funny Games) returns to the French language to tell a simple story of love and death. As with all of Haneke’s films, the less known about them going in, the more satisfying the experience of watching them unfold is--and that is especially true in this case. Suffice to say that Amour is a carefully observed and engrossing portrait of the end of life.

While the austere Austrian’s best films may be more thought-provoking, Amour possesses a deep emotional center lacking in much of the director’s work. The performances are uncompromisingly authentic and never melodramatic. The two leads, Jean-Louis Trintignant (1970's The Conformist) and Emmanuella Riva (1960's Hiroshima mon amour) are legends who have been seen in countless films, yet in this movie all the familiarity one might have with them from previous movies vanishes and they become this coupe--practically in the first, quite Hanekesque, shot. The elegant faces of these two octogenarian actors are stunning to gaze at. These are certainly movies stars, but the natural, non-surgically altered look of their age enables them to play a normal upper-middle class couple with total credibility. The dignity of their physicality and the grace of their performances make this difficult film not onerous to watch.