Amour: Love is a Many-Splendored Thing

This year, the French-language film Amour managed to break out of the Best Foreign Film category and enter the mainstream Oscar competition with nominations for Best Screenplay, Directing, Lead Actress, and of course, Best Picture. (Incidentally, it seems unfair for a picture to be up for Best Picture AND Best Foreign Film, but that's the Oscars for you.) The movie has already won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film and seems to be a shoo-in for the same category at the Oscars. But as the mainstream nominations suggest, this isn't some esoteric French film. It concerns the universal theme of love and will tug at the heartstrings of moviegoers in any country.

The movie begins ominously - firemen break into an apartment, looking for something, we don't know what. Eventually they break into the locked bedroom and find the body of an elderly woman strewn with flowers. The rest of the movie is a flashback, narrating the sequence of events that led up to this moment. We are introduced to Anne and Georges (Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant), an elderly couple who live in Paris and are very much in love. We first see them at a concert and then follow them back to their beautiful Parisian apartment, all of which suggest a wonderfully aesthetic and peaceful lifestyle. However, one day at breakfast, Anne gets a far-away look in her eyes and becomes unresponsive. Georges is alarmed. After a few minutes, Anne is back to normal and she has no memory of what just happened. Georges insists on calling their doctor. This is Anne's first stroke.

Subsequently, Anne undergoes surgery to prevent future strokes, but things go wrong and her right side is completely paralyzed. Georges brings her home and tenderly takes care of her. Anne is depressed but comforted by Georges' attentions. She exacts a promise from him that he will never take her back to the hospital. He feeds her, helps her with leg exercises, holds her as she takes shuffling steps out of her wheelchair, and tries to restore some semblance of normalcy to their daily routine. They receive some visitors, including their concerned daughter and a former pupil of Anne's who is now an established pianist. Anne seems to be feeling better, but life is cruel and another stroke follows. Now Anne is completely bedridden and is mostly incoherent. And Georges continues to take care of her.

Georges' love for Anne is the source of his strength but also his suffering. Jean-Louis Trintignant does a magnificent job of portraying a man who is watching the woman he loves fade away before his eyes. Emmanuelle Riva is heartbreaking as she transforms from an active Parisian to a helpless shell of a woman who has been betrayed by her body. Director Michael Haneke has done a masterful job of telling this story simply and poignantly, leading to a devastating but inevitable conclusion.

Amour paints a very accurate portrait of the battle between old age and eternal love. As the movie reveals the depth of Georges' love for Anne, we begin to understand that love may be beautiful, but it is also bittersweet, uplifting and agonizing in equal measure. And in some terrible but profound way, it really does conquer all.