Curator Watchlist
Amour
A devastating, patient chamber drama about aging, illness, and the last duties of love. It’s emotionally punishing but formally precise, and the performances make the film feel painfully human rather than merely bleak.
Curator Watchlist
A devastating, patient chamber drama about aging, illness, and the last duties of love. It’s emotionally punishing but formally precise, and the performances make the film feel painfully human rather than merely bleak.
Where to watch: Buy
Thu · 2h 7m
Director: Michael Haneke
Starring: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva, Isabelle Huppert
Georges and Anne are in their eighties. They are cultivated, retired music teachers. Their daughter, who is also a musician, lives abroad with her family. One day, Anne has a stroke, and the couple's bond of love is severely tested.
Michael Haneke
Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva, Isabelle Huppert
A devastating, patient chamber drama about aging, illness, and the last duties of love. It’s emotionally punishing but formally precise, and the performances make the film feel painfully human rather than merely bleak.
Amour is one of the most exacting films about love ever made because it refuses to sentimentalize what love looks like under pressure. Michael Haneke strips the story down to a single apartment, a single relationship, and a single brutal fact: devotion does not protect anyone from decline. What remains is not romance in the conventional sense, but endurance, dignity, irritation, tenderness, and the terrible logistics of care.
The film’s power comes from restraint. Haneke observes rather than manipulates, and that makes every small gesture feel enormous: a hand held, a meal prepared, a silence that lasts too long. Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva are extraordinary, finding a lifetime of shared habit inside the smallest exchanges. The result is emotionally overwhelming without ever begging for tears.
This is not an easy recommendation, but it is an essential one for viewers drawn to rigorous human drama. It is about aging, yes, but also about the final shape of commitment when the body and language begin to fail. Few films are this unsparing and this compassionate at the same time.
kayla (4★) · 1599 likes
Devastating and honestly hard to watch. I’m literally horrified of becoming an old person
DirkH (5★) · 1297 likes
Jarring, moving, confrontational, emotive and deeply sincere. Any great piece of art should possess one or more of these qualities and Haneke's film simply possesses them all. And for me personally, I'd like to add soul searing. I am not that familiar with Haneke's work and the films I have seen by his hand range from brilliant to boring for me. But they all have one thing in common, they are relentless to their audience and their themes. It is… more
Peaceful Stoner (5★) · 947 likes
Georges Laurent does not shed a tear. Age is the greatest sculptor of all. When young, we are afraid, but we pretend not, of what punches life might throw at us. We are afraid of the future, we are afraid of Death, not of our own but of our beloved ones. Age, apart from wilting the physicality and deteriorating the health, infuses great determination and gives humans the solidity to face the pains of life and death unlike any other.
Paul Schrader · 734 likes
Watched Michael Haneke's wrenching Amour tonight and afterwards met him at a reception. He said my book Transcendental Style had been an important book for him. I said, okay, I'll make a transcendental film about you--and I did. I blew him up! He loved it and insisted I email him a copy, which I did.
DallasFrance (5★) · 640 likes
When I was seventeen, my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Suddenly, this indomitable figure in my life was becoming increasingly infantilized and dependent. I would sometimes have to drive around our neighborhood and find him: we could take away his car keys, but we couldn’t keep him trapped in our house. Most of the time he seemed blissfully unaware of his circumstances, but at other times I could see in his eyes that he knew he was losing control. My… more
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aging, illness, caregiving, marriage, mortality, dignity, memory, isolation
drama, romance, austere, emotional, existential, slow-burn, elderly, caregiving, French cinema, art-house