Amour – Corrie shows a film about love
On Sunday August 10th, Corrie Film Club shows a film called Amour that raises searching questions about the nature of love and the duties it may be seen to impose. Written and directed by Michael Haneke, Amour won the Palme d’Or in 2012 at the Cannes Film Festival – a second dazzling success for Haneke, following his astonishing Caché (Hidden). Emmanuelle Riva, who won the Best Actress award, was 85 years old when Amour was released, and the exploring of love between two people nearing the end of their lives is deeply – some may say, disturbingly – perceptive.
Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) and Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant), are retired piano teachers, in their 80s. One morning, Anne suffers a stroke, quite silently. Georges at first thinks she is playing a prank on him – but when she comes round and is unable to pour herself a drink, he realises that something has happened. Anne undergoes surgery for a blocked carotid artery, but the operation goes wrong, leaving her half paralysed and confined to a wheelchair. She makes Georges promise he will not send her back to the hospital, and he gives her this assurance willingly. One day, she tells him she does not want to go on living.
Their daughter, Eva (Isabelle Huppert), comes to visit. She wants her mother to go into residential care, but Georges feels he cannot break the promise he made to his wife. He employs nursing staff, but fires them after he find that one of them is mistreating Anne. The underlying, unspoken story becomes more tense and more heart-breaking as he looks ahead and knows what he must do.
One day, he sits beside Anne and tells her a story of his childhood that calms her and makes her smile. Gently, he picks up a pillow and presses it over her face, telling her that he has freed the pigeon that was trapped in the room. Afterwards, he goes out to buy flowers. Much later, firemen break down the door to find Anne’s body, dressed with care, lying in the midst of an opulent bower of withered blossoms.
The film raises hard questions about euthanasia, and about perceived duty. It has provoked outrage from those who feel that bringing death is always an act of murder, though many others have found it almost unbearably moving and affirmative. But its title is unquestionably right. Amour is a film about love.
Corrie Film Club showings are free of charge, though contributions to the hall’s running costs are always welcome. The screening begins at 8.00 pm, and all are welcome.
