Amour (2012)

(In French, On TV, October 2019) The real horror movies aren’t always marketed as such. In Amour, for instance, we’ve got a near-intolerable depiction of a realistic and heartbreaking situation: an elderly man having to take care of a severely disabled partner at the very end of their lives. There’s no way it will end well, as either the premise or the opening moments of the film suggest. Much of the two-hour film is a steady descent into the inevitability of death and there’s nothing remotely fun about it. In Michael Haneke’s usual style, the camera lingers long before, during and after the main point of a scene has been made: there isn’t much of a plot despite the film’s running time, and that makes the experience even more harrowing. Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant are heartbreaking as a committed couple who end up suffering through no fault of their own except for the breakdown of human bodies. Despite the straightforward plot, Amour is a lot to take in because it deals in inevitabilities. No genre element, no fantastic creature we can deny: just what happens to a lot of us as we age. If the film has any upside, it’s to make the thought of dying alone seem almost like a happy ending considering the alternative.