An emotional tale of enduring love

By Kenneth TuranFILM: AmourCAST: Jean-Louis Trintignant, Emmanuelle Riva and Isabelle HuppertDIRECTION: Michael Haneke It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. It accomplished an unprecedented sweep of the European Film Awards, taking best picture, director, actor and actress. The Los Angeles Film Critics Association thinks it’s the best picture of the year, and so do I. What is it about Michael Haneke’s Amour that inspires this level of fervour and respect, given that it’s basically a two-character drama set almost exclusively in an unassuming Paris apartment?The answer is that Amour is a perfect storm of a motion picture, with an icy, immaculate director unexpectedly taking on deeply emotional subject matter: what happens to a lifelong, harmonious marriage when the wife suffers a series of debilitating strokes that changes the couple’s life beyond recognition. The resulting interplay of ruthless restraint and unavoidable passion, plus the film’s refusal to shrink from depicting the inevitable horrors of physical deterioration, is devastating.Because the key focus of Amour is on the enduring love between this couple — or, as the writer-director has said: “How we cope with the suffering of someone we love very deeply” — casting could not be more critical. The subtle but unstoppable acting here is impossible to improve on.Though Haneke is Austrian, some of his best-known films, including Cache and The Piano Teacher, feature French players, and he has set Amour in Paris and elicited shattering performances by two superb actors we have been watching all our movie lives, Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant.Riva, who is 85, made her first splash as the star of Alain Resnais’ 1959 Hiroshima Mon Amour, while the 82-year-old Trintignant has starred in some 135 films, including such popular classics as A Man and a Woman, Z and The Conformist.It is a bit of a shock to see these familiar faces so aged (especially, Trintignant, who essentially retired from film in 1998). But watching them act here, seeing how a lifetime’s worth of craft informs their ability to convey so much without seeming to be doing anything at all, is a revelation.Essential to these performances is Haneke’s surpassing skill as a minimalist director, someone who adroitly pares away everything that is extraneous and, with a severity that has felt like coldness in other films but is welcome here, absolutely forbids the slightest whiff of the kind of sentimentality that would be ruinous.In fact, Haneke is so rigorous in what he wants that Trintignant considers him the most demanding filmmaker he’s ever worked for. “Often, directors ask us to show what we feel, and with Haneke, no, above all you mustn’t show what you feel,” he told one interviewer. “You have to just feel, and he does the rest.”Before the tenor of the couple’s experience irrevocably alters, Amour introduces us to them as they enjoy the kind of loving, companionable old age we all hope we can have. We encounter Georges and Anne at a Paris concert hall, attending a classical recital by one of Anne’s many students who, we intuitively understand, have succeeded professionally.Then, the next morning as they share a cozy breakfast in their kitchen, something happens. It happens so suddenly, so imperceptibly, we can’t see it even if we know it’s coming. But it changes everything.Georges asks Anne a question, and just like that she does not respond; her mind has gone away. The change is so subtle it takes both Georges and viewers a minute or so to realise that anything has occurred. This brief catatonic state is soon over, and not only does Anne not remember it, but she also has difficulty believing it took place. Though a trip to the doctor terrifies them both for different reasons, a visit is clearly necessary.An unspecified time later, Georges is in conversation with the couple’s daughter, Eva (Isabelle Huppert), who has come over from London, where she lives with her fellow classical musician husband. Anne has suffered a minor stroke because of a blockage of the carotid artery, and surgery to clear up the condition has made things worse, leaving her frightened and unable to move around the apartment without a wheelchair. Eva offers to help, but Georges says firmly: “We’ve always coped, your mother and I.”With Anne’s mobility impaired, the film never leaves that apartment again (in one of Amour’s many personal touches, the home is modelled after the former apartment of Haneke’s parents). Veteran cinematographer Darius Khondji is expert in keeping us visually involved despite the restricted setting. Camera movements are limited but fluidly executed, and Haneke is not afraid to keep the camera motionless and frame scenes in a static wide shot.Georges and Anne do their best to get used to their dramatically different circumstances, to cope not only with Anne’s altered physical condition but also with the changes in their individual psychology and how they relate to each other. Their unspoken fear is that things will get only worse. And, of course, they do.Amour does not hesitate to depict Anne’s increased physical degeneration, but it also looks squarely at the inconceivable emotional strains placed on both of them — strains that outsiders, including their daughter, can’t alleviate or even understand. When Georges is forced to tell Eva point blank: “Your concern is of no use to me,” it is a moment both shocking and inevitable.Finally, however, as its title insists, Amour is a moving love story, a privileged glimpse of a relationship between two people who are everything to each other, and a film that enlarges our understanding of a reality we would prefer not to confront. This is a narrative not of the end of love but of love taken to the bitter, hard-to-bear end. When Anne says at one point as she looks at photo albums of their past, “it’s a beautiful life”, we are meant to understand that nothing we’ve seen or will see can possibly alter that. — Los Angeles Times/MCTStreets of violenceFILM: The King of the Streets CAST: Yue Song, Li YuFei, Yang JianPing, Kang En DIRECTION: Yue Song, Zhong Lei  The claims are big. The King of the Streets calls itself as “China’s first street-fighting movie” and a film that “pits real-life martial artist Yue Song against more than 10 of the world’s top contenders in MMA, Jiu-jitsu, Jeet Kune Do, Sanda, and Muay Thai boxing”. But does it deliver? The answer may vary, depending on what you expect from a film. If you are looking for a polished storyline, drama and sophisticated performances, then this is not your cup of tea. But if you are only looking for some good fighting and action scenes, you have come to the right film.Yue Feng (Yue Song) is a young thug with exceptional streetfighting abilities. He will stop at nothing to defeat all challengers — until, in an tragic accident, he kills a fellow competitor and is sent to prison. Eight years later, Yue Feng emerges a changed man. He no longer fights, and is looking for a new life of peace and fulfilment. But it’s brutal on the streets, and redemption doesn’t come easy. His brotherhood is destroyed, family members murdered, and a loved one humiliated — a deadly chain reaction that leaves him no choice but to unleash his power in the name of justice.Yue Song is a skilled fighter. The occasional blur effects with quick editing and speed ramping will be off-putting to some, but there are some solid hits hidden behind all of that. — WSBorrowed ideasFILM: Gallowwalkers CAST: Wesley Snipes, Kevin Howarth, Riley Smith and Tanit PhoenixDIRECTION: Andrew Goth And now a horror western film. It really can’t get sillier than this. After a group of outlaws kills his lover, Aman (Wesley Snipes) goes after them and kills them. When he is killed himself, a nun, his mother, breaks her covenant to save the life of Aman, which in turn curses him for life. His curse brings his victims back to life, and as the undead, they pursue him endlessly for revenge. Forever suffering this curse and still seeking revenge, Aman enlists Fabulos (Riley Smith), a young gunman, to fight by his side against his undead victims.Wesley Snipes is back from his forgot-to-pay-his-taxes “vacation” as Aman. There is much borrowing from other movies. The spaghetti western nod is there, and for the effort, they get credit. The action/gore is minimal and computer generated. —WS(DVDs courtesy: Saqr Entertainment Stores, Doha)