It has been a long time that I have been in a cinema at all - and on top of it to see a film, which really moved my heart and made me think hard.
This film is a french/german/austrian coproduction and has received a Golden Palm in the Cannes Film Festival this year. I suppose this was more for the fact that three legends of The French Film, Jean-Louis Trintignant , Emmanuelle Riva and Isabelle Huppert have been starring in it and we all know, that France is one of the last countries left, which knows what their artists are worth.
This film is different. First of all the story could be told in one sentence: Old couple faces death. Not normally a sujet which will fill the cash boxes. But then the cinema was pretty full. And very silent ( might have helped that in the cinema I went there was no popcorn available). It is a very quiet and slow movie, painfully slow sometimes, not, as we have to get used to more and more, running and anticipating, leaving you breathless only by watching it...
Here feelings and thoughts are expressed, often without words, but so clear and so courageous that you stomach twists and turns. Impossible not to be drawn into the story, into the relationship between those two old people. To start thinking about it. Then the relationship with their daughter, here Isabelle Huppert: a mirror to all of us, showing selfishness and helplessness in the face of the truth. Impossible not to react to that too.
I am not sure, who of the both main charactes/actors are more to be admired - Emmanuelle Riva takes the plunge in looking the part - and when she is proud and haughty, the fear and helplessness is there as well to be felt and seen. Jean Louis Trintignant fights despair and memories but keeps the stiff upper lip - and this will slip as well in a moment of letting go.. Both are old in reality too, which gives this film a tone of truth, which is heartbreaking. If there ever was a need to prove that old age has its own courage, there it is. There is hope for us all. Inspite of everything.
What stays is dignity, independance, despair and joy, clearness and awe. A beautiful film. And not for the faint hearted.
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