The 11th feature by Austrian director Michael Haneke already had a swag of awards before winning the Oscar for best foreign film, including his second Cannes Palme d'Or, a Golden Globe and nods on both sides of the English Channel.
Oscar recognition comes not a minute too soon for a man who has stamped his distinctive mark on European cinema for nearly a quarter-century now. And it's perhaps no coincidence that Amour lacks the emotional austerity of his other work.
The characters of Haneke's films - eerily calm thugs who conduct a methodical home invasion (Funny Games); a sexually repressed, self-mutilating woman (The Piano Teacher); a literary celebrity couple in Paris (Hidden) - are observed with what seems like the cool detachment of an entomologist. It's one of his strengths as a film-maker that he denies the viewer the chance to glibly and sentimentally engage with the people he creates. But the couple in Amour are the first he has given us who are possible to love.
They are Georges and Anne, retired piano teachers in their 80s, who live in a fusty Paris apartment where all the film's action, save a couple of early shots, is set. One morning at breakfast Anne suffers a small but significant stroke, setting in motion a story that has an inevitable outcome, plainly depicted at the film's beginning.
In moving the story forward, Haneke, who also wrote the script, deploys the meticulous and assured technique that has earned him so much admiration. But he also shows a warmth that has been little in evidence before.
