I guess I'll never understand the infatuation of the art-house crowd (and the Cannes festival in particular) with Michael Haneke, a director who did bold and ground-breaking work in the 90s but has since slipped into eclectic mannerisms that this reviewer has found increasingly unbearable. It's not just that nothing happens in Haneke's films, it's that he has been passing off artificial renditions of admittedly stylistic mastership as presentations of actual social dilemmas. If you realize, however, that there's always one particular scene in a Haneke film that the whole story has been carefully engineered to carry, then you will find yourself rather unimpressed by the stories they tell; you'll just wait two hours for it to finally happen, and feel tremendously bored in the process.
In 'Love', the subject dealt with is caring for a loved one impaired by a stroke, and it's one that I'm personally familiar with, having taken care of my paralyzed father during his last years. That's what prompted me to view it in spite of considering 'The White Ribbon', notwithstanding its laurels, one of the dullest films I've ever seen. While this doesn't make me an expert on health care, I found the ultimate 'solution' in the film offensive, even though I more than less expected such a conclusion; it's offensive because this is what intellectual people with enough money to take psychoanalytical tours of their oh-so-interesting subconscious consider the logical outcome of immense stress. And yet millions of people worldwide feed their ailing relatives with spoons or change their diapers without thinking of - I might as well relieve you of the suspense - suffocating them. Situations like these tend to take you along with them, rather than giving you Othelloesque airs.
To be sure, until that point in the film there were a lot of situations I found myself familiar with: explaining what you do to relatives who think you should do a better job while staying away from the work, trying to make sense out of doctor's comments, telling off private nurses rushing through their routine, and most of all, watching a person you were close to all your life fade away. Yes, there are moments when you crack. But not only is the breakdown - in an otherwise wonderful performance by the great Jean-Louis Trintignant - a rather obvious 'hommage' to the climax of Jean-Jacques Beineix's 'Betty Blue' (in which it's much more appropriate and hard-hitting), it's also a completely unnecessary sensationalist twist to an otherwise straight-laced, no-nonsense account of what happens to an elderly couple.
Had it not been for this, I would have left the film thinking: 'Good, Haneke is back to his original strong story-telling, even though it's 30 minutes too long'. But as it is, 'Love' is one of his calculated, constructed bore-offs catering to an elitist audience who probably put their parents in homes, and transform their guilt over such neglect into admiration for a film dealing with the subject. 'Stopped on Track', which won the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in 2011, is a much more honest, less calculated look at a family dealing with the prospect of death. It also has what 'Love' most distinctly lacks - heart. For that is what makes me bash Haneke's films so often: they may have brains, but no heart to go along with.
In 'Love', the subject dealt with is caring for a loved one impaired by a stroke, and it's one that I'm personally familiar with, having taken care of my paralyzed father during his last years. That's what prompted me to view it in spite of considering 'The White Ribbon', notwithstanding its laurels, one of the dullest films I've ever seen. While this doesn't make me an expert on health care, I found the ultimate 'solution' in the film offensive, even though I more than less expected such a conclusion; it's offensive because this is what intellectual people with enough money to take psychoanalytical tours of their oh-so-interesting subconscious consider the logical outcome of immense stress. And yet millions of people worldwide feed their ailing relatives with spoons or change their diapers without thinking of - I might as well relieve you of the suspense - suffocating them. Situations like these tend to take you along with them, rather than giving you Othelloesque airs.
To be sure, until that point in the film there were a lot of situations I found myself familiar with: explaining what you do to relatives who think you should do a better job while staying away from the work, trying to make sense out of doctor's comments, telling off private nurses rushing through their routine, and most of all, watching a person you were close to all your life fade away. Yes, there are moments when you crack. But not only is the breakdown - in an otherwise wonderful performance by the great Jean-Louis Trintignant - a rather obvious 'hommage' to the climax of Jean-Jacques Beineix's 'Betty Blue' (in which it's much more appropriate and hard-hitting), it's also a completely unnecessary sensationalist twist to an otherwise straight-laced, no-nonsense account of what happens to an elderly couple.
Had it not been for this, I would have left the film thinking: 'Good, Haneke is back to his original strong story-telling, even though it's 30 minutes too long'. But as it is, 'Love' is one of his calculated, constructed bore-offs catering to an elitist audience who probably put their parents in homes, and transform their guilt over such neglect into admiration for a film dealing with the subject. 'Stopped on Track', which won the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes in 2011, is a much more honest, less calculated look at a family dealing with the prospect of death. It also has what 'Love' most distinctly lacks - heart. For that is what makes me bash Haneke's films so often: they may have brains, but no heart to go along with.