As we hear the opening strains of Schubert’s Impromptu Opus No. They are, however, our subject characters. One couple rises to let a man pass by to his seat, so it does not seem special. Typical of Haneke’s approach, nothing directs our attention to anyone in particular. The camera is on the stage, looking out at the audience that awaits the start of a piano recital. The scene is a wide shot of a concert hall. Within moments, we learn it is the stench of death as another door is opened, and we see a female corpse all laid out with dying flowers spread around her.Ĭut to the flashback, and the journey begins. We see him encounter a terrible smell and is forced to open the windows. The camera then follows one of the firemen around the apartment. We see this from inside the apartment as if we were standing there, waiting for it to happen, and saying, It’s time you showed up for my story. The film opens with the fire department breaking down the front door of an apartment. The opening scene essentially prepares viewers for how the film will end. After the opening, these themes are presented in a strictly linear, unencumbered manner. The themes in this film are simple and straight forward: love and devotion aging, elderly debility, and dementia and their effects upon the person and his or her family mercy killing and death.
The movie concludes with an ultimate, moralistic test of their caring. A visit from their adult daughter Eva reaffirms just how secluded from society the highly educated couple have become.
Her devoted husband, Georges, struggles with the formidable task of being Anne’s full-time caretaker. Two retired classical-music teachers are savoring their golden years in a comfortable apartment, when the wife, Anne, experiences a stroke that leaves her partially paralyzed. “Amour will, I believe, take its place alongside the greatest films about the confrontation of ageing and death, among them Ozu’s Tokyo Story, Kurosawa’s Living, Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, Rosi’s Three Brothers and, dare I say it, Don Siegel’s The Shootist.”Īn octogenarian couple find their love put to the ultimate test when one suffers a stroke, and the other must assume the caretaker role in this compassionate yet unsentimental drama. Philip French in The Guardian, November 17, 2012: George and Anne Laurent: Husband and wife former piano teachers