newjerseynewsroom.com

BY PAULA SCHWARTZ

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

The New York Film Festival is in the home stretch, and the movies this year have been better than ever, but after seeing some 25 movies in 12 days, they can begin to blur. Still, the one movie I can’t get out of my head (or heart) is “Amour,” by 70 year-old director Michael Haneke (“The White Ribbon,” “Funny Games,” “Cache”). This exquisite movie stunned audiences in Cannes - where it won the Palme D’or - with its artistic achievement and depth of emotion.

“Amour," is set in Paris, and as its title suggests is a love story, of a couple, married and deeply connected. But imagine this couple, more than half a century after they met, now octogenarians, who are sick and facing the end of their lives. This is their story. Jean-LouisTrintignant (“The Conformist,” “Z,” “A Man and a Woman”) plays stoical Georges, who watches as his wife Anne, played by Emmanuelle Riva (Alain Resnais’ “Hiroshima Mon Amour”), begin to slip away after suffering two strokes. He tries to shoulder the burden of caring for her, but we already know how this story will end; at the beginning of the film the police break down the door of the elegant Parisian apartment where the couple lived and find Anne’s body carefully laid out on the bed. This movie goes backward to tell the story of the downward slide of this elegant and refined couple. It’s a humanistic meditation on love, marriage and death that is deeply rewarding and told with much tenderness and no sentimentality.

Last week Haneke, who dresses in all-black and has a dry sense of humor, talked about the challenges of making the film, his inspiration for the story, and the difficulties of directing pigeons (they do what they want). Here are highlights from last Friday’s press conference:

Q: What inspired this story?

MH: It was the story of my aunt, an aunt whom I loved very deeply. At the end of her life she was suffering terribly, and it was an awful experience for me to have to go through that, to witness her suffering and not be able to do anything about it. That was the catalyst for the story although the story of my aunt has nothing to do with the story I tell on screen.

Q: Can you talk about staging the film almost entirely in an apartment? 

MH: When you're old and when you're elderly then your life is reduced to the four walls that you live in. That was the external reason for the choice. Similarly, I could have opened the story up, I could have made a drama that included everything that goes on around the scenes in the hospital, everything to make the sort of socially critical film that you often see on television, but that wasn't my concern. What I was focusing on was the love story. There was another consideration for the aesthetic choice, however. When you're dealing with a theme that's as serious as this one then you have to find a form that's worthy of what you're dealing with, and that was the reason that I went back to the three classical unities of Greek drama, of time, space, and action.

Q: Can you talk a little bit about the casting of the two leads?

MH: I wrote the screenplay for Jean-Louis Trintignant. In fact, I wouldn't have shot the film without him. Not only is he a superb actor but also he exudes the human warmth that was necessary for the role. It was different with Emmanuelle Riva. I'd seen her as a young man in "Hiroshima My Love," I was immediately smitten by her, but I'd lost her from sight over the years. So when I came to that part I did a normal casting in Paris, I met with all the actresses of the appropriate age. It was clear from the first audition with Emmanuelle that she was ideal for the part. Not only because she's a wonderful actress but also because she and Jean-Louis Trintignant form a very credible couple.

Q: Was there anything in the script that they were afraid of in any way? I mean Emmanuelle has this particularly revealing scene in the shower. Was she ready for that?