With its one-word title functioning as both a statement and a question, Amour is a perceptive, compassionate and deeply intelligent study of an elderly couple struggling to cope with the sudden impact of illness and disability. It is a film about intimacy, tenderness, patience and devotion, but also about fragility and frustration and the limits of commitment when one person is faced with caring for someone who can do almost nothing for themselves.

Anne and Georges Laurent are retired piano teachers who have produced a succession of successful young concert performers and now live a limited but contented life in their rambling Parisian apartment. Rather shabby now, their home still retains signs of its former elegance. Through skilful camerawork and dialogue, Haneke draws us into the couple’s domestic routine so that we become intimate observers, almost part of the family. When at breakfast one morning, Anne suddenly becomes totally unresponsive for several minutes, we are as shocked and bewildered as Georges.

We learn that a stroke has paralyzed one side of Anne’s body, and the rest of the film charts Georges’ struggle to deal with his wife’s gradually deteriorating condition. We see the couple learning to cope with a wheelchair, bathing and toileting. Following a second stroke, Anne loses the power to communicate and calls out mutely to indicate her inner distress.

Apart from the brief opening scene set in the theatre, the whole film is shot in the Laurents’ apartment. Their enclosed world is penetrated from time to time by messengers from outside – visits from their daughter, nursing staff or a former pupil; a photo album that recalls a past life in which Anne was active and full of life; a pigeon that repeatedly flies in through an open window. At one point we are shown a series of tightly framed shots of oil paintings of the French countryside – the closest we come to the external world of which Anne and Georges were once a part.

This beautiful and disturbing film reveals many facets as it slowly unfolds before our gaze. One one level it is educational, helping viewers prepare for caring for partners or parents who will inevitably decline with increasing age. It also asks how, in situations like this, the dignity of the defenceless can be preserved, as well as the sanity of those who may be tempted to take on more than their physical and mental resources will allow.

Published in Tui Motu Magazine. April 2013: 29.