It's light, breezy and artfully silly

 

Director Francois Ozon wisely stocks The Crime Is Mine with veteran French actors. The list includes Fabrice Luchini (as a judge), Regis Laspales (as a detective), Olivier Broche (as a clerk to a judge), and Dany Boon (as an architect). I begin here because in revamping a 1934 play, Ozon needed actors with a deep understanding of the ripe exaggerations needed for screwball comedy. Add Isabelle Huppert as a fading silent film star, and Andre Dussollier as the head of a tire-manufacturing company and you've got the makings of an old-fashioned comedy served with a feminist twist. Rebecca Marder and Nadia Terezkiewicz give the movie its center as down-and-out roommates -- one a lawyer, the other an actress. This youthful duo finds itself caught up in a murder. Ozon includes a trial that perhaps anticipates the age of tabloid sensation because the defendant views the courtroom as a launching pad for an acting career. It's difficult to resist the performances of a cast intent on making the most of every opportunity to display finely honed character chops. The Crime Is Mine stands as a fine example of how smartly to execute farcical material that easily could evaporated in the mists of nostalgia. Better yet, Ozon plays with old-fashioned forms without needing to declare his superiority to them. There’s also icing on the cake: Production designer Jean Rabasse, cinematographer Manuel Dacosse, and costume designer Pascaline Chavanne give this pleasure of a movie a rich retro look.

A dress, a dream — and few surprises

   Mike Leigh veteran Lesley Manville plays a seamstress who longs to own an original Christian Dior dress in Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris. I can't quite say that I wish Mrs. Harris hadn't gone anywhere, but this adaptation of a 1958 Paul Gallico novel adds little seasoning to its comfort-food approach to cinema.

   Motivated by a beautiful dress she sees in the closet of a woman for whom she cleans house, the widow Harris comes into some money, heads for Paris, attends an exclusives private showing of Dior originals, and tries to purchase one. 

   Mrs. Harris's objective pushes the story into class-distinction territory. No one at the house of Dior -- especially gatekeeper Mme. Colbert (a stern Isabelle Huppert) — believes that the low-born Mrs. Harris deserves to be in the same room with so much elegance.

   Mrs. Harris finds a champion in the widowed Marquis de Chassagne (Lambert Wilson), an aristocrat who insists that she be allowed to watch the showing and buy whatever she chooses. 

   Manville has no trouble carrying the movie as an increasingly assertive woman who will not be denied, but director Anthony Fabian seldom pushes against the movie's predictable stitching.

   A subplot centers on a top Dior model (Alba Baptista) who entices Dior's accountant (Andre Lucas Bravo). She reads Sartre's Being and Nothingness and insists she'd rather be studying philosophy than working as a high-class clothes horse. 

   Cliche? Of course. And, by the way, it’s doubtful that she could keep herself in make-up based on a philosophy student’s income.

   Formula (though gently applied) doesn't stop there. Mrs. Harris not only wants a dress but becomes a feisty advocate for the working stiffs who produce Dior's fabulous clothes.

   Manville works hard but the movie -- never credible to begin with -- becomes increasingly difficult to swallow as it labors to wrap things up.

   Oh well, one thing remains true: It's nearly impossible to weave a first-class movie out of material that may not be threadbare but shows an awful lot of wear.

She's needy -- and she's a stalker

Isabelle Huppert goes over the top and so does director Neil Jordan's Greta.

If you were looking for someone to play a woman able to shift from maternal to menacing without missing a beat, someone who knows how to sell weird and creepy, you'd have to look no further than Isabelle Huppert, the French actress who -- no matter what roles she plays -- refuses to yield all her secrets.

In a performance that builds toward over-the-top madness, Huppert dominates director Neil Jordan's Greta, a thriller with horror movie flourishes that increasingly sacrifices sense for emphatically expressed shocks.

Jordan (Mona Lisa, The Crying Game, Michael Collins and The Butcher Boy) knows how to engineer a movie's jolts, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's always able to get beyond them. Put another way, Greta becomes increasingly insubstantial and incredible as it unfolds.

The story hinges on a promising conceit. Chloe Grace Moretz's portrays Frances, a young New Yorker who discovers an abandoned purse on the subway. A recent college grad who works as a waitress, Frances insists on returning the purse despite the objections of the well-heeled roommate (Maika Monroe) with whom she shares a SoHo apartment.

Frances' mission takes her to Brooklyn where Huppert's Greta lives in an apartment that's tucked behind an archway that isolates it from the rest of the street.

Jordan has no interest in making a movie about a good Samaritan so it's only a matter of time until the apparently grateful Greta turns into a stalker -- and worse. Greta claims to be like gum; i.e., she sticks to things -- or more accurately to people.

Having recently lost her mother, Frances proves vulnerable to Frances' initial proffer of friendship, but Greta already has gone off the rails and her runaway personality soon threatens to crush Frances. As Greta's stalks Frances, a nuisance morphs into a nightmare.

At times, Jordan suggests the movie might make interesting use of its New York surroundings, but he's more committed to narrowing his focus to concentrate on the ways in which Greta terrifies an increasingly rattled Frances.

I'm guessing that Jordan was trying for a movie in which cruel developments offer twisted fun; i.e., entertainment through scares, outlandishness and at least one bloody gross-out.

But the absence of deeper mystery pushes everything onto Greta's slick surface, where it slides into territory that's not only farfetched, but implausible and, in a few instances, laughable.

Poor Stephen Rae: He's stuck in the role of a private investigator hired to search for Frances. You needn't have seen Hitchcock's Psycho (although who hasn't?) to know that Rae's screen time will be limited. His character's fate is as obvious as just about everything else in an overamped thriller that not even the always-intriguing Huppert can save.

They're at Cannes -- but not for the films

Claire's Camera reunites actress Isabelle Huppert and South Korean director Hong Sang-soo.

It’s arguable that South Korean director Hong Sang-soo could have written the outline for his deceptively slight new film, Claire’s Camera, on the back of a cocktail napkin. Watching the movie, which takes place during the Cannes Film Festival, you may wonder whether Hong isn’t improvising, dropping a quartet of characters onto the festival’s periphery and then sitting back to see what happens.

In one way or another, all the characters in Claire's Camera are related to the world of film. So Wan-soo (Jung Jin-young) directs films and has one playing at the festival.
Kim Mi-hee's Jeon Manhee has been working for a film sales agent (Chang Mi-hee) who fires her at the beginning of the film, claiming that she no longer trusts Man-hee to be honest with her.

Claire (Isabelle Huppert) portrays the film civilian in the group; her character teaches music but wanders about Cannes with a Polaroid camera, asking if she might snap photos of the people she meets.

In the scene in which Manhee loses her job, Hong sends a clear signal that he’s going to take a few comic shots at the idea of capturing life on film. Chang’s character asks the woman she has just fired to join her in a selfie, an absurd commemoration of a moment both characters probably should want to forget.

Having Huppert walk through the film with a camera seems a little artificial, but Claire serves as a catalyst to bring out the back stories — not necessarily presented in chronological order — that drive Hong’s slender but emotionally piquant narrative.

The movie’s Cannes setting proves relevant but never dominating. This may be Cannes, but watching great films seems pretty far down on anyone's agenda. Hong seems interested in the way his characters respond to slowly revealed truths.

Unlike some directors, Hong seems to know that he has hold of a slender premise and at 68 minutes, he doesn’t overwork it.

As for the director portrayed in the film ... Jung’s character proves as disheveled as his rumpled haircut; he's an unsympathetic mess of a man.

The same can’t be said for Claire’s Camera, a film of elusive but insinuating charms. And, no, I don’t believe anything about the movie was improvised.

A softer movie for Isabelle Huppert

Isabelle Huppert never quite allows us to penetrate the enigmatic challenge she presents with almost every character she plays. Huppert never ingratiates herself or her characters with audiences. Her expressions suggest mystery, something about an indistinct but important past. Generally, Huppert's mixture of self-possession and depth work to create signature performances, but they don't quite fit Huppert's new movie, Souvenir, a trifle of a romance that teams Huppert with French star Kevin Azais. Huppert plays Liliane, a woman living a dreary life in which she goes to work each day at a pate factory. Antiseptic and lifeless, the factory looks as if it could have been lifted from a satirical riff about food that has lost its power to nourish. Routine dominates Liliane's life: Go to work. Take the bus home. Watch quiz shows. Change arrives when Huppert's character meets a new employee at work. An aspiring young boxer, Azais's Jean recognizes Liliane as a former contestant who sang on popular television talent show that attracted national attention. Jean draws a reluctant Liliane back into the show-business fray. Director Bavo Defurne does little to turn the movie into anything more than a pleasant diversion -- the kind of movie in which not much comes as a surprise but we hardly care. When Liliane tells the much younger Jean that their relationship could never possibly work out, you can bet that, after a few beats, a committed embrace will follow.

One big unhappy family

Michael Haneke's Happy End lacks the director's usual edge.

In movies such as Amour, The White Ribbon, Funny Games, Cache and The Piano Teacher, Austrian director Michael Haneke has established himself as one of the cinematic voices most committed to observing the brutal nature of nearly all human interaction. Haneke's movies can have so much edge, one often feels cut by them.

In Happy End, Haneke files down the edge a bit, but still clings to his less-than-optimistic views about society and its despicable perils.

This time, Haneke focuses on the Laurents, a wealthy French family living in the port city of Calais. Georges (Jean-Louis Trintignant), the family's patriarch, has fallen into physical and mental decline. His daughter Anne (Isabelle Huppert) has taken charge of the family’s construction company and is about to announce her engagement to a British businessman (Toby Jones) who's helping arrange a company-saving loan.

Anne’s son Pierre (Franz Rogowski) drinks too much, imbibing hostility along with his wine. Anne’s philandering brother, Thomas (Mathieu Kassovitz), works as a surgeon; Thomas’ daughter from a previous marriage, Eve (Fantine Harduin), has just moved in with her father. Eve's Mom became incapacitated from a drug overdose, a situation that creates discomfort because we know from early images that Eve has an interest in poisons.

Not surprisingly, the characters live behind curtains of self-absorption with Haneke introducing computer conversations and cell phone photography in an attempt to add one more element of alienation, as well to give the story some contemporary spin.

Unafraid to present his images in lengthy takes that defy contemporary pacing, Haneke again immerses us in a world in which the so-called civilized folks are vicious and the rest of society (notably a group of immigrants seen at the end) are innocent pawns. Same goes for poor Rachid (Hassam Ghancy) the family servant who lives in a house next to the large mansion where all of the Laurents reside.

Unlike some of Haneke’s work, Happy End can’t entirely escape dullness, even as its defiant characters work their cruel ways. Happy End is like a snake bite without enough venom as if the snake has become so desensitized by a cruel society that it wants nothing more than to be put out of its own misery.

A woman who defies easy explanation

Isabelle Huppert gives a masterfully self-possessed performance in director Paul Verhoeven's Elle.

From the outset, it's clear that Elle has little interest in characters who behave in recognizable ways.

In the movie's opening scene, for example, a woman is raped in her home by a masked intruder as her apparently indifferent cat looks on. Once her assailant has left, the woman neither calls the police nor completely unravels. She collects herself, and goes about her business.

Two things may help explain this oddly unexpected behavior. First, the woman is being played by Isabelle Huppert, an actress who seldom allows herself a predictable beat. Secondly, Elle is the work of director Paul Verhoeven, whose filmography has ranged from Dutch art house favorites of yore (Soldiers of Orange and Spetters) to whopping Hollywood commercial fair such as RoboCop and Basic Instinct.

I can't say that Elle made a great deal of sense to me, but I agree with those who find fascination in Huppert's uncanny self-possession.

Nearly everything that takes place in Elle goes against the grain of normal assumption. When Huppert's Michelle, who owns a video-game company with her partner Anna (Anne Consigny) evaluates a game the company is in the process of developing, she insists that it must have orgasmic payoff. She wants to satisfy her audience, and isn't about to let rape put her off her business game.

Based on a novel by Philippe Djian, the plot is cluttered with relationships. Michelle's sleeping with Anna's husband (Christian Berkel), a man who treats their sexual liaisons with arrogance and entitlement. Michele's mother (Judith Magre) pays a hunky young man for sex, and then decides to marry him. Michele's ex-husband (Charles Berling) is a failed writer who has taken up with a younger woman (Vimala Pons), but still seems dependent on Michelle. Michele's dim bulb of a son (Jonas Bloquet) works at a fast-food outlet, and lives with a pregnant young woman (Alice Isaaz) who couldn't be more obnoxious and who eventually gives birth to a child that clearly was sired by someone other than Bloquet's character.

A Christmas party attended by most of the characters I've discussed in the preceding paragraph tilts the movie toward satire and helps introduce yet another character, a stock broker named Patrick (Laurent Lafitte). Patrick and his ultra-religious wife (Virginie Efira) live across the street from Michelle.

Attracted to the hunky Patrick, Michelle plays footsie with him at Christmas dinner. Earlier, she had masturbated while observing Patrick through a large pair of binoculars as he and his wife put up a Christmas display, a creche composed of life-sized figures.

I haven't mentioned a backstory about a heinous crime, but there's no need. No more can be revealed about the plot without offering spoilers, but Elle generates curiosity in the way it mixes bizarre sexual gamesmanship and bruising violence for what, in the final analysis, may be a strained critique of bourgeois pieties.

Whatever you make of Elle, you'll probably agree with the critical consensus that Huppert -- considering her work here and in the earlier Things to Come -- has given two of the year's most intriguing performances.

In Elle, she comes across as an uncompromising force of a woman who dares you to explain her behavior -- and knows that you'll probably fail.

A professor loses her moorings

Isabelle Huppert portrays a philosophy professor whose life hits a bad patch.

She teaches philosophy, and has a stable marriage. Her two kids may not be following in her academic footsteps, but she loves them. Her former students think fondly of her. She's written books that have been well-received by her colleagues.

So what precisely does Nathalie Chazeaux have to complain about?

Ostensibly, nothing -- aside from the deep existential questions that occupy us all and may prove a bit more vexing for students of philosophy.

But in director Mia Hansen-Love's Things to Come, Nathalie undergoes a series of life-transforming events. Her stolid husband -- also a philosophy teacher -- announces he's "met someone." He's leaving her for another woman. Nathalie's publisher says that a seminal textbook she has written has gone stale. A former student (Roman Kolinka) should be following in her footsteps, but seems more interested in dropping out of academia to make cheese in the countryside. He's still reads philosophy; it's academia that has lost its allure.

You might think that Hansen-Love has served up a French version of the woman-on-the-verge-of-nervous-breakdown scenario. You'd be wrong -- partly because Hansen-Love wisely underplays her hand and partly because of Isabelle Huppert's intriguing performance as Nathalie.

Few actresses are as good as Huppert at keeping us off guard; she doesn't tip her hand about her character's thoughts. Don't be fooled, though, her character is thinking -- perhaps all the time.

Nathalie doesn't indulge in emotional outbursts, but that doesn't mean that she isn't capable of resolve. She's firm with her ex-husband (Andrew Marcon). She refuses to maintain any part of their marital facade. Why not go to the summer house they shared for many years? Why overdramatize, he asks? She's not about to pretend that nothing has happened.

Nathalie may not overdramatize, but she certainly internalizes. And she's clearly dealing with heavy weather, including the constant demands of an aging mother (Edith Scob), a woman whose beauty once made her the center of attention. Mom can't (or won't) adjust to the moment in life when she's fading from the scene.

Don't look for Huppert to go off the rails when the whiz-kids at her publishing house insist that her books be revised to include eye-catching graphics. But that doesn't mean you won't see Nathalie judging the abject superficiality of marketing minds that threaten to turn the book business into a joke.

Hansen-Love's approach may remind you of a filmmaker such as Eric Rohmer. I say that because Things To Come isn't a film about characters who are doing momentous things; it's a film about how these characters live -- with Huppert serving as our guide.

Nathalie's world may not be unbearably painful; but it's not satisfying, either. And that's a problem she'll carry into the future, the uncertainty of an acutely intelligent woman who'll probably stumble again as her life evolves.

Dealing (or not) with a terrible loss

A Norwegian director makes his English-language debut with Louder Than Bombs.

Norwegian director Joachim Trier (Reprise, Oslo, and August 31st) makes his English-language debut with Louder Than Bombs, an intimate portrait of a father and his two sons, men who can't move on after the death of the wife and mother (Isabelle Huppert) they lost.

Huppert's character, who's seen mostly in flashbacks, wasn't only a suburban mom: As a celebrated war photographer, she won acclaim for her portraits of human devastation. She and her husband (Gabriel Byrne) sometimes fought over her need to endanger her life by pursuing the kind of indelible images that often win prizes. Her work also threw her into prolonged fits of depression.

No wonder, then, that Huppert's character perished in a head-on collision near her home, not in some remote corner of Afghanistan. She may have been like those military people who see terrible combat and have trouble ever going home again. She'd seen too much.

In one way or another, father and sons all are foundering.

A one-time actor who has become a school teacher, Dad is having an affair with another teacher (Amy Ryan). Their relationship must be kept secret because the family's youngest son (Devin Druid) attends the high school where both Byrne and Ryan's characters teach.

The older son (Jesse Eisenberg) is a father himself, but he's not really committed to his marriage.

Trier establishes this dissatisfaction early on when Eisenberg's Jonah meets an old girlfriend (Rachel Bresnahan) in the hallways of the hospital where his baby has just been born. Jonah allows Bresnahan's character to jump to the conclusion that there's something seriously wrong with his wife (Megan Ketch), perhaps that she even died.

The youngest boy -- Conrad by name -- hasn't been told that his mother's death was a suicide, something one of mom's former colleagues (David Srathairn) is about to reveal in a piece he's writing for The New York Times.

The screenplay brings father and sons together when Eisenberg's Jonah shows up to sort through negatives left by his mother, an unexamined cache that may contain pictures that belong in an upcoming retrospective of her work, the occasion for the Times article.

Trier likes to bring his camera close to his characters' faces, which -- in some ways -- serves as a source of irony: The camera closes in on these characters, but seeing them in close-up isn't the same as knowing them. These close-ups also help convey the impression that the characters have difficulty seeing beyond themselves.

Druid's performance as an angry teenager tends to dominate the proceedings, but Byrne is entirely convincing as a father trying to keep his composure when faced with his youngest son's terrible recalcitrance. Eisenberg holds up his end of the bargain in a smaller role as an unhappy young professor who doesn't seem particularly interested in getting to the bottom of his discontent.

Trier bravely deals with difficult subjects and his style -- which involves shifting times and alternating points of view -- keeps the material from lapsing into melodrama.

Sometimes the movie engages in Rashomon-like structural ploys, showing the same incident from two points of view.

In one these, Byrne's Gene can't resist following his very unhappy teen-age son. He wants to know what the boy's doing. The same incident takes on a new meaning when repeated from the young man's perspective.

Despite a willingness to explore the aftermath of grief, Louder than Bombs has so much on its plate that it can't quite anchor its emotions. Trier gives us plenty to chew on and, perhaps, not enough to digest.

A young wife's vanishing act

Chastain and McAvoy strike impressive notes in The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby.

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them is a hybrid creation that results from making a two-hour feature out of two separate movies that ambitiously tried to observe a troubled marriage from the vantage points of both husband and wife.

This amalgamated production, which stars James McAvoy and Jessica Chastain, may not achieve greatness, but it's not without its virtues.

Chastain gives another deeply inhabited performance, this time playing a woman who's trying to shut down most of her feelings, and you certainly sense the high ambition in director Ned Benson's approach. He includes the work lives of the characters, as well as their relationships with parents and friends.

In this version, Benson proves a master of slow disclosure, gradually dispensing relevant information as we become more familiar with the characters. An estranged husband and wife are dealing with a tragic event that totally upended their marriage and just about everything else in their lives.

The movie moves back and forth between Eleanor (Chastain) and Conor (McAvoy). They open the movie in a scene set during their courtship. They're in a restaurant, and Conor lacks sufficient funds to pay the bill.

The adventurous Eleanor devises an escape route, bonding the couple with an illicit act that suggests the outlines of the relationship we'll get to known better as the story progresses.

After a suicide attempt, the shattered Eleanor moves in with her parents (Isabelle Huppert and William Hurt). A university professor, Hurt's character tries to help Eleanor, often to no avail.

Dad does, however, introduce her to a professor and former colleague (Viola Davis) who's teaching a course on identity formation, and who approaches life with a savvy, slightly cynical air that's a bit too unvaried to be totally convincing.

McAvoy's Conor, who's trying to keep a struggling bar and restaurant afloat, moves in with his father (Ciaran Hinds). In contrast to his son, Hinds' character operates a highly successful bar and restaurant, but seems stuck in his own brand of misery anyway.

Bill Hader plays Conor's pal and the chef at his restaurant, a guy who evidently has had a long-standing relationship with his buddy.

Eleanor Rigby (an avid Beatles fan, her father saddled her with the name) vanishes from Conor's life. Again and again, he tries to make contact with her.

At about two hours in length, the movie overstays its welcome, but I found it watchable, even when I felt as if I were observing actors trying to work out difficult issues in various challenging scene studies.

The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby makes you (at least it did me) eager to see Benson's two-film study of a marriage. Perhaps, then, its best parts -- and there are many -- would cohere in a more impressive way.

Murky plot sinks 'Dead Man Down'

A disappointing thriller from a strong collection of talent.
If you're interested in movies, Dead Man Down seems difficult to ignore. The movie marks the U.S. debut of Danish director Niels Arden Oplev, who directed the Swedish edition of the enormously popular The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. On top of that, the movie stars Noomi Rapace, the gifted actress who worked with Oplev to create the pivotal (and unforgettable) character of Lizbeth Salander in the original Dragon Tattoo series.

The rest of the movie's cast -- Colin Farrell, Terrence Howard, Isabelle Huppert, F. Murray Abraham and, very briefly, Armand Assante -- suggests we're in for a movie with strong performances and a multi-national flavor.

But Dead Man Down -- which was written by J.H. Wyman and which is set in New York City -- proves to be a murky affair, an overly complex story that revolves around Manhattan real estate, mobsters (domestic and Albanian), explosive violence and an odd, evolving relationship between Farrell's Victor and Rapace's Beatrice, a beautician whose face has been badly scarred in an automobile accident.

Dead Man Down puts a variety of revenge-driven forces into play, turning itself into a puzzle of a movie that bets that we'll stick with it until its loose-ends are tied at the end. But in this case, we're asked to make our way through a thick pile of narrative sludge as Dead Man Down heads toward its ultra-violent resolution.

Part of the problem involves the characters. Farrell, who's in almost every frame, portrays an emotionally withdrawn, recessive man who works for a mobster named Alphonse (Howard). It takes time for the screenplay to get around to explaining what Victor really wants, and Farrell can seem as inert as he is mysterious.

Victor and Beatrice live in separate but neighboring apartment buildings. She watches him from her balcony and decides -- with encouragement from her mother (Huppert) -- that she ought to meet this mysterious fellow. As it turns out, Beatrice has a vengeful agenda of her own, which can't be described here without adding significant spoilers.

Suffice it to say that the movie's dreary mood extends to the performances. Rapace fares better than the others, remaining interesting despite the fact that she's playing a character that doesn't compute, but Howard, whose work I almost always enjoy, never seems to find a handle on his character.

Huppert portrays a happy woman who speaks more French than English, Assante is limited to one scene, and an equally underutilized Abraham pops in an out of the story as Victor's uncle.

The movie tries to make use of the fact that Victor -- a native of Hungry who was trained as an engineer -- has technical skills, but little about the character sticks, and in the end, Oplev resolves the plot's many conflicts with an overblown and preposterous display of violence.

Although Dead Man Down generates a bit of visual interest, it's noir musings mostly come off as leaden, unbelievable and more than a little confusing.

Disappointing as it is, Dead Man Down does boast at least one distinction: It may be the first neo-noir movie to figure out a way to work Tupperware into its plot.

The last days of a long marriage

Beautifully acted and unflinchingly honest, Michael Haneke's Amour goes where few movies have the courage to venture.

The living room is spacious enough to accommodate a grand piano. The walls are lined with books, CDs and LPs, relics of a sort. The stereo equipment looks as if it dates to the 1980s. Georges and Anne, both in their 80s, inhabit this Parisian apartment. They were classical musicians; she taught piano at a high enough level to help some of her students become concert artists.

You can tell by the lived-in look of things, that Georges and Anne have resided in this apartment for a long time. It's quiet, even isolated, filled with a sense of daily life that has settled into comfortable routine.

One night Georges and Anne return home from a concert to discover that their front door has been pried open. Nothing seems to be missing. Let's say that this is more than an attempted burglary; it's a foreboding.

The next day, while seated at the kitchen table and discussing how to get the door repaired, Anne suffers a stroke, the first sign of what will become a labored deterioration, a spreading paralysis that will lead her through various stages of disablement and ultimately to death.

If the story of Anne's final days weren't in the care of Austrian director Michael Haneke, Amour easily could have drifted into movie-of-the-week territory, a smorgasbord of melodrama and sentiment. But Haneke (The White Ribbon and Cache) is not given either to melodrama or sentiment, and he delivers Amour in long slow takes that demand that we consider what it's like to watch someone die. He offers no soothing interruptions. No flashbacks to happier times.

Although punctuated by visits from Georges and Anne's daughter (Isabelle Huppert), a few nurses and the apartment's helpful superintendent and his wife, Amour never feels like anything but a two-hander, a slow dance performed by two amazing actors, Jean-Louis Trintignant (familiar from A Man and A Woman) and Emmanuelle Riva (the girl in Hiroshima Mon Amour). These two icons of French cinema give two of the year's best performances. Riva's has been acknowledged with an Academy Award nomination; Amour has been nominated for best picture and best foreign-language film, and Haneke received a best director nod. And, yes, the overlooked Trintignant deserved an Oscar nomination, as well.

Awards considerations aside, Amour stands as a movie of compelling subtleties and careful refinements, a late-life study that never feels studied.

The solitude of the apartment which Georges and Anne occupy tells us of their slow removal from a more bustling life. One imagines days in which they entertained, dinners full of wine and lively conversation. We suppose that many of their friends are gone: During the movie, Georges leaves the apartment to attend a funeral, one of his few forays into the world beyond what seems to have become a retreat.

The drama centers on Anne's decline. After an unsuccessful surgery, she returns home knowing that her situation is hopeless. Georges assumes a caretaker role, shuffling about the apartment, tending to Anne's needs, being chastised by her when she catches him looking at her too long. Is he wondering whether she's OK? Trying to understand how she's adjusting to the inevitability of her fate? Contemplating life after she's gone? Forming a mental picture that will last?

It matters, I suppose, that Georges and Annes are cultured people. They've lived a life in the arts. They have made and appreciated beautiful music. They have read the latest books. They have kept up with events. Now -- like people in a waiting room -- they anticipate an arrival; they're waiting for Anne to die. Inside their apartment, time seems to have slowed and even expanded, the way it does when waiting becomes a preoccupation.

The title of the movie should not be overlooked. Amour certainly qualifies as a love story. The contours of the relationship between Georges and Anne are well-defined. We can imagine their lives before we meet them, and if you know these actors from their younger days, you sometimes may see traces of their former selves. As it must, what was has become what is.

So what happens? Georges must help Anne in the bathroom; he must help her exercise her withering body; he must watch as she loses control of her bodily functions; he must listen when she's reduced to forcing out bits of sentences that barely make sense. Haneke brings a near-reportorial eye to all of this. And Trintignant maintains a kind of gentle resolve as he tends to Anne.

Georges doesn't want to let Anne go. At the same time, he understands that she's suffering indignities that she finds intolerable. She's not fighting death; she's battling the degradation of illness.

Georges tells his daughter, who wonders whether Anne shouldn't be put into a home, that he will not allow it. He promised Anne he wouldn't let her die in an institution. For Georges and Anne, life no longer has much to do with outsiders, even their daughter.

At one point, Anne looks at the family photo albums, and decides that life has beauty. But Georges and Anne seek no refuge in the past; they're firmly fixed in the present -- and, for them, the present is challenging because they know that they're no longer in control of much of anything -- if, indeed, they ever were.

Georges and Anne have their own ways of reacting to the situation in which they find themselves. I think it's possible to tell, for example, what they might have argued about when they were younger and more vital.

Among other things, Amour is a portrait of a long marriage, a snapshot taken during love's final act. Sans a musical score, sans visual embellishment, Haneke contemplates life's end. For many that may sound like a daunting, discouraging and unsatisfying.

I found Amour to be none of those things, but saw it as a carefully distilled and pared down portrait of a marriage that involves us in the lives of Georges and Anne, as those lives are near their end.

Honest as it is spare, Amour asks us to wonder what we would want if we were Georges and Anne, to acknowledge that if we're lucky enough to live long enough, we will become Georges and Anne -- and it will not be easy. If we're really fortunate, we may be able, as Anne does at one point, to acknowledge the beauty of what we've experienced.