Amour

This Friday is Frost's Descent. On the cusp of autumn and winter, tonight's two films are both about the shape of a circle.

Before the Rain runs its three chapters end to end — a Macedonian village, a London restaurant, a photographer coming home — until time loops back to where it began: time never dies, the circle is not round. Amour is the other circle: an elderly Parisian couple's life tightening inside one apartment, from a stroke at the breakfast table through 127 minutes of life's plainest final passage.

One is about how hatred cycles; the other about how love ends. Both made in Europe, eighteen years apart — one at the edge of war, the other deep in peace.

巴黎。Georges 和 Anne 是一对退休音乐教师，都八十多岁，女儿在国外。一个普通的上午，Anne 在餐桌前突然失去意识——中风。从医院回来后，她右半身不能动、话也说不出。Georges 拒绝了女儿「送疗养院」的提议，独自承担起照料。

剩下的大部分时间，镜头就停在这间公寓里：喂饭、洗浴、康复、一次又一次的钢琴声。没有闪回，没有解释，只有日子一天天过去的样子。

Palme d'Or at Cannes 2012 and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 85th Oscars (submitted by Austria) — with The White Ribbon (2009), Amour made Haneke only the second director in Cannes history to take the Palme d'Or in two consecutive years. It collected a further four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture — a rarity for a non-English-language film of its day — with Emmanuelle Riva, 85, becoming the oldest Best Actress nominee on record.

The rest of the trophy cabinet is equally full: BAFTAs for Riva (also the oldest winner) and Best Film Not in the English Language; five César Awards from ten nominations; four European Film Awards; the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film. Critics: 93% on Rotten Tomatoes across 223 reviews, 95 on Metacritic; No. 42 on the BBC's 2016 poll of the 21st century's 100 greatest films, and No. 69 on its 2018 poll of the 100 greatest non-English-language films.

Formally, Haneke compresses everything into one apartment: locked-off cameras, no cutting to close-up, no score. The audience is shut inside with Georges — which is exactly where the film's power comes from.