“Amour:” Life, Love and the Unawarded Oscar

 

AT THE MOVIES

With

David Begelman

 

“Things will go on as they have done up until now. They’ll go from bad to worse. Things will go on, and then one day it will all be over.”

So intones Georges, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant, in the searing film about the ravages of old age, “Amour.” The actor looks much older than he did when his French star began to rise playing opposite Brigitte Bardot in Roger Vadim’s “And God Created Woman” or in other films by Bertolucci, Rohmer, Truffaut, not to mention Claude LeLouch’s art-house classic, “A Man and a Woman.” He plays one of the three central characters in Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke’s 2012 movie.

The other two are Isabelle Huppert and Emmanuele Riva. We save the best for last.

Huppert, the brilliant actress who has appeared in over 90 film and T.V. productions since the early seventies, was one of four women who won the Best Actress Award at Cannes more than once, and one of two who accomplished the same feat at the Venice film festival. This reviewer was flattened in his seat by her performance in the 1978 “La Dentellière” (The Lacemaker), for which she received the 1978 César Award. The accolades keep coming. She took to the stage in Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler,” and has been designated by one critic as “arguably the world’s greatest screen actress.”

Emmanuele Riva has appeared in 18 films, including Alain Resnais’ “Hiroshima mon amour.” Her starring role in “Amour” is the most recent for her, the oldest woman (86 years) to have been nominated for an Oscar. That she didn’t receive it for her portrayal of Anne in this film may tell you more about the standards of tinseltown than it ever could about the actress’s performance. She plays the role of a woman stricken with a stroke and dementia, a characterization greeted with stony silence on the part of the audience attending the Bantam movie house the day this reviewer saw the film. The impact of the portrayal was evidently touching and profound.

Anne and Georges are retired pianists. Their story unfolds in an artfully designed series of flashbacks by director Haneke, starting with a scene of Anne lying deceased on a bed, her corpse adorned with flower petals.

Flashbacks involve a scene of both partners attending a concert by one of Anne’s former pupils, a visit to their Parisian apartment by the same student, visits by the couple’s daughter, Eva (Huppert), who remonstrates with Georges about the necessity of placing Anne in a hospital or nursing home given her deteriorating condition, and ministrations by two nurses hired by Georges to care for Anne. He fires the second one (Dinara Drukarova) for treating Anne is a less than acceptable manner, given her compromised condition.

Despite Eva’s entreaties, Georges has promised Anne he will never place her in an institution despite her illness, and his commitment to her as well as his undertaking the onerous responsibility for her care, is the haunting theme of the film.

Some of Haneke’s touches in “Amour” seem at first blush to be redundant, like scenes of Georges attempting to capture a pigeon which has accidentally flown into the apartment. But they symbolically highlight Georges’s feeble attempts to cope with more important challenges posed by Anne’s condition. In a second attempt to corner the pigeon with a blanket, he is seen struggling to rise up clutching the wrapped up bird to his chest.  

“Amour” won the 2012 Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or, not to mention numerous other awards and nominations. If you are looking for astonishing performances by an actress, look no further. Emmanuelle Riva wins, hands down. Ironies in any case abound. Today it is an 86 year-old French actress. Yesterday it was a six year-old with no acting experience at all: Quvenzhane Wallis in “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” Maybe some day Hollywood will prove to be other than clueless. But don’t bank on it. Unlike the heroine of “Amour,” it may need a nursing home—yesterday.