Amour (Love)

The director Michael Haneke (left) on the set with actor Jean-Louis Trintignant

Michael Haneke on the set with actress Emmanuelle Riva and actor Jean-Louis Trintignant

AMOUR (Love)            B+               

France  Germany  Austria  (127 mi)  2012  d:  Michael Haneke        

Sony Pictures Classics [United States]

Winner of Haneke’s second Palme d’Or (1st prize) at Cannes, though overly morose, and not without some controversy, as it appears to be a safe and conventional choice, with a Nanni Moretti-led Jury picking this film over Carlos Reygadas’ 2012 Top Ten Films of the Year: #2 Post Tenebras Lux and Wes Anderson’s 2012 Top Ten Films of the Year: #3 Moonrise Kingdom, both devastatingly original and much more inspiring works, while the talk of the festival was the even more fiendishly outlandish Léos Carax revival 2012 Top Ten Films of the Year: #4 Holy Motors, yet the director has made a powerfully devastating film about the horrible indignity of dying, and watching someone you love deteriorate before your eyes, where in your mind they’re still alive and strong, the way you remember them, except they’ve become fragile creatures that can’t help themselves anymore.  What’s different about this approach is Haneke’s unsparing and exhaustively banal detail in depicting all aspects leading up to death, including the unsettling, interior psychological turmoil that plays into such a personalized experience.  Perhaps Haneke’s crowning achievement is casting the aging couple with French New Wave cinema royalty, writing the film for Jean-Louis Trintignant (who’s 81) as Georges, from Claude Lelouch’s A MAN AND A WOMAN (1966) and Eric Rohmer’s My Night at Maud's (Ma Nuit Chez Maud) (1969), a superb actor who hasn’t worked in seven years, while Emmanuelle Riva (85) is Anne, from Alain Resnais’s HIROSHIMA, MON AMOUR (1959), the one who has a series of medical setbacks.  Both appeared in Krzysztof Kieslowski’s THREE COLORS TRILOGY, Riva appearing in BLUE (1993) while Trintignant was the lead in RED (1994), where both personify a cultured European dignity with an undisputed air of intelligence in their roles, which certainly comes into play here, as both have professional backgrounds living in an enormous Parisian apartment with an entire wall filled with shelves of books, including a piano, where she was a revered piano instructor, along with various drawings and paintings on the wall.  This couple is the epitome of cultural refinement, where it’s actually a joy, initially, to watch their clever wordplay with one another.            

The initial intimacy is followed by the realization that Anne is likely having a minor stroke while sitting at the breakfast table, where hospital efforts to restore her back to full health fail, leaving her partially paralyzed on her right side, requiring a wheelchair, where Georges has to help her get in and out of bed, her chair, the bathroom, and anywhere else she goes, but we never again see her leave the apartment, creating a highly restrictive use of ever confining space, as if the walls are caving in on them.  While they still maintain a daily routine, where the mundane details become the surgically precise structure of the film, they simply don’t get out anymore, so all they have is each other, music, and photograph books of earlier memories.  Their daughter Eva, Isabelle Huppert, shows obvious concern, thinking her mother should be receiving round the clock hospital care, but after her initial experience, Anne has no interest in ever returning to another hospital.  Eva complains to Georges, as if he’s not doing enough, but he’s taking care of her himself, feeding her, helping her perform the daily exercises, with nurse visits three times a week, and the doctor every other week, but Eva is devastated when her mother has another mild stroke and loses much of her speech, where her indistinguishable words don’t make sense and she can’t make out what her mother’s trying to say, which only becomes more disturbing.  None of the medical setbacks are shown, but happen incrementally, where Anne, once a fiercely stubborn force to be reckoned with, becomes completely helpless, requiring full-time care, which Georges is happy to provide, though it is exhausting.  He is the consummate picture of a man giving his undying devotion to the love of his life, where he is still consumed by her presence, still filled with the incredible aura of her life. 

But no matter how well educated and culturally aware, this never prepares anyone for watching a dying partner, where the daily grind eventually grows frustrating, especially when all you’re looking for is just a tiny sign that the person you’re married to is still there.  Haneke has a seamless approach to unraveling his film, where memories and dreams are mixed into the daily routines, reflecting the inner thoughts of those onscreen, where the mosaic of mixing them all together is an extremely accurate reflection of their existence.  So too is the way Georges starts hiding just how ill Anne is becoming, especially from Eva, who continues to call for the latest updates, where his energy to respond without anything hopeful to say simply disappears with each passing day, yet she persists, which from Georges’ point of view feels like an invasion, as all this couple has left is a few private moments.  The energy it takes out of her mother for one of Eva’s visits is something perhaps only Georges understands, which leaves Eva even more devastated as she simply doesn’t know what else to do.  Georges, of course, knows he’s already providing all there is to do, but he can’t change the agonizing twists of fate.  The lingering finality of the experience is hauntingly sad, as there’s nothing about it that’s easy or refined, where the underlying theme that persists throughout the film is a civilized and genteel couple who are cultured, who understand that beauty stands alongside life’s tragedies, but this still leaves you weakened and trembling at the knees, where nothing can prepare you for the inevitable finality.  Haneke doesn’t make any of this comfortable for the viewer, but it is a daring and exquisitely elegant portrait of what awaits us all, given a poetic and wordless farewell that has a touch of theatricality to it, where there are no neat bows tying up loose ends, instead there’s a sudden flood of emptiness, and the rest is silence.   

If truth be told, our own lives may have an overload of painfully prolonged and tragic deaths very reminiscent of what is portrayed onscreen, unfortunately witnessing too many people die in the end stages of cancer, so there is a certain degree of traumatic discomfort when encountering the subject once again, especially with the unaltered, unedited amount of realism mandated by this director, which to a large extent is the dramatic power of the film, the accumulating effects of death shown with such acute detail.  As a result, this is not a film likely to be revisited again.  The film is reminiscent of Maurice Pialat’s THE MOUTH AGAPE (1974), another film about a woman slowly dying from cancer, a starkly realistic portrait of death, told in segments of real time with long takes of her lying in bed.  While Haneke narrows his focus to an aging couple very much in love, Pialat paints a satirical portrait of the woman’s family avoiding bedroom visits or any dealings with sickness or death as they instead find ridiculous ways to pleasure and amuse themselves as they all wait for her to die.  In contrast, Haneke shows us the face of death through an exacting control over the increasingly oppressive material, confining actions within a ruthlessly restrictive space, which seems to parallel Georges’ efforts to maintain control over his beloved wife, right down to locking her inside a room so no one else, including her daughter, can see her in such a deteriorating state.  Haneke has always had a deep connection with suicide, preferring a dignified exit, sparing the dying from the agonizing medical atrophy, instead seeing it in its most simplistic light, which may be seen as an act of human kindness, however wretched it appears.  Once distanced from Haneke’s film, the more one appreciates a certain simplistic perfection, though one can't yet determine overall greatness when the subject matter alone is something that would likely never be returned to, so as a one time only experience, how significant can a film be?   Might the same be asked of Haneke’s own loathsome Funny Games (1997) (1997), or Pasolini’s SALÒ, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM (1975)?  Still can't answer that perplexing question.  Final thoughts, however, are appreciating the film’s tenderness and restraint, including the unique way Haneke expresses compassion through unspoken, interior thoughts and a highly inventive use of visual cues, offscreen sound, and original imagery.

Racer and the Jailbird (Le Fidèle)

Actor Matthias Schoenaerts

 

Actress Adèle Exarchopoulos

 

RACER AND THE JAILBIRD (Le Fidèle)                         B                                

Belgium  Netherlands  France  (130 mi)  2017  ‘Scope  d:  Michaël R. Roskam                   Official Facebook           

From the maker of 2012 Top Ten Films of the Year: #6 Bullhead (Rundskop) and The Drop (2014), both of which succeeded with riveting direction and terrific casting, this one maintains its hard edge, again prominently featuring Matthias Schoenaerts in a sexy thriller that revolves around fast cars, romance, a high stakes heist, and a double cross, perhaps the kind of film that used to feature the cool demeanor of actor Steve McQueen, but this time the film suffers in the casting of Adèle Exarchopoulos, who is beautiful to be sure, but in over her head when it comes to serious acting, as she’s never proven she can deliver a powerful performance onscreen, providing sexual allure, but no drama.  Seen earlier in relatively insipid performances in Nolwenn Lemesle’s Pieces of Me (Des morceaux de moi) (2012) and Pierre Godeau’s horrid prison drama Down By Love (Éperdument) (2016), along with her highly acclaimed but overrated performance in Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue Is the Warmest Color (La Vie d'Adèle, Chapitres 1 et 2) (2013), the first gay/lesbian themed film to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes, though the sex scenes are exploitive and gratuitous, becoming the raison d’être of the film, where the real deficiency is surprisingly weak character development.  And therein lies the problem in this film, as the scenes where she appears simply underwhelm, sapping the high-voltage energy out of the film, as otherwise the sleek direction and powerful performances prevail in this consistently dark and stylish film that seems to feed on fatalism and a brooding code of silence among thieves.  At the center is this fascination with beautiful people, like the people who thrive in the elegance and luxury of places like Monaco, where Bibi, short for Bénédicte (Exarchopoulos), a rich girl hyped on speed and adrenaline, loves to race for her father’s race car team.  While she catches the eye, like a poster girl or magazine cover, the underlying story lies elsewhere, in the turbulent life of Gino, otherwise known as Gigi, a bank robber from a broken background, where he grew up in a life of crime with a tight-knit gang that has been his adopted family, developing an unbreakable bond, showing a rare allegiance to one another.  But when Gino sees Bibi the first time, removing her helmet and race uniform, revealing a svelte feminine physique underneath, his life suddenly jumps on a different track, where they instantly become the beautiful couple. 

The theme of their first date is “No flowers,” as she’s not the sentimental type, while Gigi is not a man to mince words, both falling head over heels for each other, meeting at a seaside pier in a downpour overlooking a drearily overcast city of Brussels, forcing them indoors to have passionate sex, with him proclaiming to be in the car import/export business, a cover that allows him to move around a lot, making frequent trips to Paris with his gang of indispensable friends, where she’s none the wiser, blind to his real profession, though early on he acknowledges he’s secretly a gangster that robs banks, but she thinks he’s kidding, showing an underlying macho-side of himself that she likes.  As intense as ever, Schoenaerts is one of the best tough guys in the business, not only raw and imposing, but willing to mix it up with the best of them, where there’s always something dangerous and threatening about him, though here he puts on an air of sophistication that perfectly conceals his real identity.  After a while, however, she senses an unusual sense of privacy, spending a lot of time with his gang, urging him to come clean.  Gigi suggests his attraction to dangerous jobs is much like the adrenaline rush Bibi gets when she’s racing, suggesting a revealing portrait of two daredevils.  When the film cuts away to his day job, viewers will not be disappointed, as Roskam executes one of the most spectacularly staged heist sequences, where robbers swoop in like a SWAT team, all dressed in masks and camouflage, carrying automatic weapons, executing a perfectly timed robbery, where the planning and meticulous attention to detail is brilliant, but that’s nothing compared to the exit sequence, dropping a shipping container onto the highway, completely blocking their flight to freedom.  Masterfully shot by Roskam’s longtime Belgian cinematographer Nicolas Karakatsanis, who is also a professional photographer with works in art galleries, who perhaps uniquely specializes in shooting in darkness, where shadows prominently come into play, bringing what amounts to an avant garde aesthetic to the screen.  This perfectly matches the cocky swagger of Schoenaerts, who moves around undetected in the dark, an anonymous figure that could be anybody.   

What’s perhaps surprising is the staying power of the romantic relationship, as there are plenty of opportunities to jump ship, not the least of which is her father’s warning that “Real men don’t lie,” suggesting that if he’s lived in the shadows until now, surrounded by nefarious figures, he’ll have to come clean if he wants to marry his daughter.  This powerful message haunts the rest of the film, as Gigi has made a living up until now by completely concealing who he is, living a duplicitous life, so in the end it comes down to what it always comes down to in the movies, making one last score.  This adds not only emphasis but suspense to the next job, with powerful implications.  Accordingly, this final job is wracked with innuendos and last minute complications, where the police are tipped off, adding a fatalistic gloom when Gigi winds up in prison.  Focusing almost entirely on his fall from grace, especially considering the opening highs, the tone becomes much more subdued, yet Bibi has her own strange subplot behind the scenes, veering into a melodrama of personal anguish and sorrow, which includes, incredibly, the involvement of Albanian gangsters to break him out of prison.  Adding whirlwind twists and turns, that at the very least are as perplexing as they are surprising, clouds the film in supreme mystery, as both lovers are operating on totally different psychological wavelengths, almost as if what’s happening comes from two different films.  In a film that’s already jam-packed with plenty of activity, it’s surprising to see all these late plot twists, but if anything, they add a darker picture of underlying grief and despair in a film that grows mercilessly bleak by the end.  Suffice it to say, the Albanians are good on their word, sneaking the man out of prison, but they’re hardly a trustworthy bunch, with even more complications arising upon his release, yet despite all this extraneous detail, Roskam and Schoenaerts are brilliant together, where the scenes devoted to his singular character are as bracing as anything he’s ever done, where the finale is a thing of beauty.  Borrowing heavily from Claude Lelouch’s masterful eight-minute short C’ÉTAIT UN RENDEZ-VOUS (1976), C'était un rendez vous - Claude Lelouch (HD) 8'24'' - YouTube (8:24), of a Ferrari, with a camera fastened to the front, racing unannounced through the streets of Paris one morning, reaching speeds of 140 mph, a transfixing piece of guerilla footage that was done without permits or police blocking off the streets (Lelouch was arrested once it was posted online), taking place live on the streets as you see it, with cars and pedestrians in play as they go flying through dozens of red lights, Roskam pulls off a similar stunt with Schoenaerts in the driver’s seat, a pulsating, stream-of-conscious, adrenal rush that puts an exclamation point on the end of this film.