Amour Fou

Amour fou, has gone some of the way towards correcting the historical imbalance of interest in the suicide pact. She’s taken liberties with the facts of the case for dramatic effect, but also because two centuries is a long time to go without someone wondering whether Vogel being shot point blank in the chest was entirely consensual.

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.

One thing’s certain: This is no swoony love story. It intoxicates all the same.

The very German lack of emotion is so acute it can be hard to tell when Hausner’s playing for laughs, but Friedel is hilariously — if morbidly — tedious as the tortured writer whose pickup line is, “Would you care to die with me?”

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.

That writer-director Jessica Hausner moves things along at such a glacial pace and fills her velvety frames with the equivalent of museum-quality oil paintings instead of with living, breathing humanity, only adds to the film's turgid quality.

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.

Meticulously directed by Jessica Hausner, AMOUR FOU should not be confused with the many French films called L'AMOUR FOU. This story of poet/playwright Heinrich von Klest and his desire for an amorous double suicide in 1810 is amazing to look at and experience. Wonderfully acted and quite bizarre--a German story told by Austrians will always have a wit and crazy sophistication no German could dream of. Despite all this, AMOUR FOU simply doesn't jell. Once again, a talented filmmaker shot down by lack of focus and too many ideas. I kept asking, "What does this romance have to do with Prussian social change?" which actually takes up more screen time than the double suicide but to little avail. But there is brilliance here such as a scene when von Kleist once again pursues a singer to be his love in the double suicide. All in a totally whacky scene that seems downright pompous and, dare I say it, normal. And bravo once again to the dogs in this film which nearly steal the show!