Amour
–By the Numbers:
- 5: Nominations
- 93, 94: Rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and Metacritic
- 4, 13: Millions of dollars earned at the domestic, and foreign box office
- 167: The combined age of the two leads
–Major Contender for: Best Actress (Emmanuelle Riva), Best Foreign Language Film, Best Director (Michael Haneke).
–Success on the Awards Circuit: Palme d’Or winner at the Cannes Film Festival, winner of 16 Best Foreign Language Film awards (including the Golden Globe), British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) winner for Best Actress
–Synopsis: After one of them suffers a debilitating stroke, an elderly married couple living in Paris sees their relationship tested like never before. French national treasures Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva star as the couple, in an intimate, heartbreaking film. Trintignant plays Georges, a former piano teacher who must tirelessly dote on his newly immobile wife, Anne (Riva), a fellow musician. Michael Haneke (responsible for disturbing critical favorites like Caché, and The White Ribbon) writes, and directs what is his least openly transgressive film yet. But Amour is far more unsettling than its title lets on, and unlike most Hollywood fare about the elderly, the ending is anything but a happy one.
–Oscar-appropriate Themes: Love, death, and the romanticizing of both via the French language.
–Juiciest Piece of Oscar Bait: White old people confronting death is plenty relatable for the Oscar voting committee.
–Buzz Going into the Oscars: 4/10. One of the little darlings of the evening, it’s got the critical support, but not the flash to be a big winner. Of its nominations, winning Best Foreign Language Film is a safe bet, seeing as it’s also nominated for Best Picture. Emmanuelle Riva skews far closer to the traditional Best Actress criteria than her competition, but Hollywood would probably prefer to crown a popular young upstart, after the “huh?” win for Meryl Streep last year. Haneke is going up against some previous Oscar-winners with more clout for Best Director, but he’s the go-to “surprise” winner, which the voters like to have one or two have each ceremony.
–Trivia Tidbit: At 85, Emmanuelle Riva is the oldest nominee for the Best Actress Oscar (and will turn 86 the day of the ceremony).
–Talking Points if Your Crowd Loves it: This seems unlikely, as uncompromisingly small foreign language films starring actors over 50 rarely get much attention from anyone, save the hugest of cinema nerds. But it’s the less talked about movies at the Oscars that are usually far more important to cinema than the eventual winner. 10 years from now, film scholars will still be talking about Tree of Life, and have probably forgotten about The Artist. The same will likely apply to Amour, and whatever inevitably beats it for the top prizes.
–Talking Points if Your Crowd Hates it: Again, it seems unlikely you’ll encounter a congregation of Amour-viewers, let alone haters. Just in case, take the movie to task for the same things people appreciate it for: its size. Amour is a two-hour jaw session that, despite the implications of the title, continues to show Haneke’s complete contempt for the emotional wellbeing of his audience. It’s a suffocatingly small film, one that gets by on the caliber of the talent involved, the subject matter, and the presumed culture capital bump of being made in another language.
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