Amour: 2013 Best Picture Nominee

Posted by Charmaine Blake on Feb 4th, 2013 in Drama, Oscar Buzz | 0 comments

Amour: 2013 Best Picture Nominee

Amour is a beautiful drama added to this year’s 85th Academy Awards Nominees. Written and directed by Michael Haneke, this Oscar nominated film is about a Georges (played by Jean-Louis Trintignant) and Anne (Emmanuelle Riva) who are both retired music teachers. They have spent a beautiful life together and even has a daughter, Eva played by Isabelle Huppert, who is also a musician but is recently residing abroad with her family. Until one day, Anne has stroke and this is where the couple’s bond of love will be tested. It is also worth mentioning that Amour received other nominations including Best Actress for Emmanuelle Riva, Best Achievement in Directing and Best Writing, Screenplay for Michael Haneke. Check out why Amour is a big hit for the Oscars this year with a movie review from Steven Rea below:

“Amour: A Beautiful Masterpiece

Michael Haneke’s worldview, at least as it manifests itself in his films, has always been marked by an emotional austerity, by the possibility of unexpected violence, by paranoia and fear.

From the creeping enigmas of Caché to the almost pornographic violation of Funny Games to the oppressive morality of The White Ribbon, Haneke has served up perfectly crafted studies of cruelty and existential dread.

Which makes the tenderness he brings to Amour, the Austrian filmmaker’s remarkable and heartbreaking portrait of an elderly Parisian couple, all the more shocking. Set almost entirely within the confines of a comfortable apartment, lined with books and filled with music, the film finds Georges and Anne, played by French New Wave icons Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva, going about their modest routines. Retired musicians and teachers with decades of marriage and a daughter (Haneke regular Isabelle Huppert) off in her own orbit, the pair share breakfast at a small table in the kitchen, and share memories, and bicker, and tease, and reflect.

There is no doubt these two people are still deeply in love, and every subtle gesture, quick glance, seemingly mundane exchange says as much. Trintignant and Riva make all this look absolutely effortless – we are watching two actors with years of experience, who have absorbed all the craft and technique they could possibly need, and their characters come to us here, before the unblinking eye of Haneke’s (and ace cinematographer Darius Khondji’s) camera, fully realized, absolutely real.

And then Anne has a stroke, and he must tend to her, feed her, help her walk and go to the bathroom. After a lifetime of independence and mutual responsibility, Georges is now the caregiver. The burden – physical, psychological – is on him.

Amour, full of a quiet precision and long, static shots, is not without its suspense, its mysteries. The film begins literally with a bang, as police knock down the door to the apartment. The chronology is elliptical, there is a terrifying dream, and there is a pigeon, an errant visitor from a window ledge, whose appearance in the rooms of the octogenarians’ flat seems comically odd at first, and then – this being Haneke – deeply troubling and strange.”

Read the rest of the review at the Philadelphia Inquirer

Check out how Argo made it to this year’s Oscar Best Picture Nomination by clicking here

Charmaine Blake loves movies, musical theater listening to music and taking pictures of anything that she finds interesting. She is a voracious reader and writer, and enjoys her time writing for New Movie Launches. Charmaine loves spending time with her pets and currently has a Siberian Husky, a toy poodle and a cat.