AMOUR At MAMI Film Festival 2012


Amour (literally, "Love") is a 2012 French-language drama film written and directed by Michael Haneke, starringJean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva and Isabelle Huppert. The film is a co-production between companies in Austria, France, and Germany.
The film was screened at MAMI International Film Festival,Mumbai and received standing ovation . It was also screened this year at  Cannes Film Festival , where it won the Palme d'Or. It has been selected as the Austrian entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards. 





The film encompasses the soul and meaning of love and executes the physical and emotional demand it requires to be told effectively and correctly. The entire film is almost shot in a lavish apartment in Paris, camera revolves almost for 1.30 hours in the apartment, the emotion in the story are so strong you hardly feel any monotony.

   Haneke steers the film effortlessly, as if he were telling a shot-for-shot story of his own experiences. He constructs and creates two real and authentic people, Georges (Jean-Louis Tringnant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva). It's wonderful to see Haneke allow the powerful leads to feel and interpret these people of their own accord. It's one of his finest writing efforts of his career. Tringnant's heart is visible and available for all the viewers to see. He's fearless as he walks through the film frail and broken yet confident and composed. He challenges the audience to empathize and question our own reactions and reality. 

Same goes Riva, who does everything right that was wrong with similar performances like Hilary Swank in Million Dollar Baby (2004). Riva goes above and beyond the call of duty, wearing Anne on her skin with vulnerability. It's one of the great performances of the year by any woman in any category. The two leads together is even more brilliant than when they're apart. Adding in the talents of Isabelle Hupert as Eva, the daughter of our married couple who finds her own love tested, is wonderfully operational. While many will chalk this film up to depression and elderly inevitability, many viewers don't share the same sentiments. The film is front to back about love, pure and simple. The events circle a morose and saddened sequence but Georges and Anne is the great love story of the year. The film dares you to find someone you love that much, in both perspectives. Haneke focuses on the couple with no outside stories of their neighbors, life before these events, or extra characters. He puts them in the spotlight, front and center.

 I can say with out any reservation that Amour could be the best film of the year and is the best film of the MAMI International Film Festival so far.

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