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Austria, Luxembourg, Germany · 2014
1h 36m
Director Jessica Hausner
Starring Christian Friedel, Birte Schnoeink, Stephan Grossmann, Katharina Schüttler
Genre Drama, Comedy, Romance
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Young poet Heinrich wishes to conquer death through love, yet is unable to convince his cousin to join him in a suicide pact. He immediately asks the same of Henrietta, the wife of a business acquaintance, who also refuses. However, after receiving a terminal diagnosis, Henrietta begins to reconsider Heinrich’s offer.
The artificiality is funny but also thematically resonant: This is a film about fake feelings, the invented romance for which two strangers forfeited their futures. And to Hausner, such a colossal waste of potential deserves not a melodramatic tribute, but the cinematic equivalent of an eye-roll.
The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij
What’s finally tragic about their destiny of choice is not that the couple succeeded in becoming immortal together but that everything leading up to their death was the result of very banal actions and shot through with an extreme sense of loneliness.
A daring, dark satire strewn with allusions to modern times.
Slant Magazine by James Lattimer
Jessica Hausner is less interested in historical revisionism than mining this real-life tragedy for its existential thrust.
The Austrian writer-director gradually locates the emotional pulse in a picture that plays less like a doomed romance than a seriocomic anatomy of one, subjecting its characters and their bubble of high privilege to sharply critical yet quietly affecting scrutiny.
One thing’s certain: This is no swoony love story. It intoxicates all the same.
The New York Times by Manohla Dargis
it can be a strategically off-putting movie yet one that also steals under your skin scene by scene and through Ms. Schnoeink’s slowly revealing performance as an ill-fated heroine turned future biographical footnote.
Village Voice by Melissa Anderson
Henriette's last thought will forever be a mystery, but the grandeur of Romanticism is tartly, pleasingly demystified.
Hausner’s previous feature, Lourdes, was sometimes frustratingly opaque, but at least it had a discernible pulse. Here, she seems more interested in period décor and symmetrical compositions than in Kleist, Vogel, or any of the ideas they espouse and/or embody. Her impressive formalism is hollow.
The Playlist by Nikola Grozdanovic
What makes Amour Fou a fascinating, if at times frustratingly idle experience, is that it seems to be saying so much with its upfront style, injections of black humor, and focus on stifled feminine disposition, yet still feels disappointingly unresponsive when mulling it over in your head.
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