It’s with great pleasure to see Austrian director Jessica Hausner’s fourth feature Amour Fou available on Blu-ray in the Us, considering several of her previous exemplary titles have failed to secure distribution altogether. Winner of Best Screenplay and Best Film Editing at Austrian Oscars, premiering her latest at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival in the Un Certain Regard sidebar, it’s an innovative exploration of the strange thing called love. Film Movement released the title in three theaters in early summer of 2015, and only managed to rake in around thirteen thousand in a three month run. Although it ultimately didn’t manage to heighten Hausner’s international profile as much as one would’ve hoped, with a little luck this should end up on some year-end best lists and continue to grasp a wider, more deserving audience.
Hausner reveals her strongest work yet, a droll, romantic exploration of sorts...
Hausner reveals her strongest work yet, a droll, romantic exploration of sorts...
- 11/3/2015
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Love Fool: Hausner’s Latest an Exquisitely Shot, Humorous Exploration of Love and Death
With her fourth feature film, Amour Fou, Austrian director Jessica Hausner reveals her strongest work yet, a droll, romantic exploration of sorts that manages to expertly blend her unique tone with exquisite digital compositions from her longtime cinematographer Martin Gschlacht. In comparison to their first outing together, 2001’s Lovely Rita, their mastery of the digital image couldn’t be more strikingly apparent. Whereas that film’s complex subject suffered greatly from the rather jarring presentation of image and jagged zooms, here they’ve controlled the medium fantastically. The film’s look is so remarkably beautiful that non-German speakers will be hard pressed to keep up with subtitles as they soak in her unique tale of dying for love.
In 1811 during the last several months of German poet Heinrich von Kleist’s (Christian Friedel) life, his search...
With her fourth feature film, Amour Fou, Austrian director Jessica Hausner reveals her strongest work yet, a droll, romantic exploration of sorts that manages to expertly blend her unique tone with exquisite digital compositions from her longtime cinematographer Martin Gschlacht. In comparison to their first outing together, 2001’s Lovely Rita, their mastery of the digital image couldn’t be more strikingly apparent. Whereas that film’s complex subject suffered greatly from the rather jarring presentation of image and jagged zooms, here they’ve controlled the medium fantastically. The film’s look is so remarkably beautiful that non-German speakers will be hard pressed to keep up with subtitles as they soak in her unique tale of dying for love.
In 1811 during the last several months of German poet Heinrich von Kleist’s (Christian Friedel) life, his search...
- 3/19/2015
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
Written by Jessica Hausner
Directed by Jessica Hausner
Austria, 2014
Presented in the Limelight of the Iffr 2015, a new program section focusing on features set for release across the Netherlands, Jessica Hausner’s Amour Fou is an atypical period drama, a biographical story about the lives, or yet better, deaths of the 19th century Berliners, Henriette Vogel and Heinrich von Kleist. Though “delightful” may appear to be a surprising choice of words for a story about a double suicide, that is precisely what the film is.
Hausner, an Austrian director and screenwriter, stylised both the film’s form and content, while maintaining a quiet and reserved aesthetic. The muted colour palette, the floral patterns and tapestries of Romantic-era Berlin, the delicate porcelain cups from which tea is sipped elegantly by gentlemen and gentlewomen lingering in their drawing rooms, contemplating the human rights of peasants, poetry and death, the theatrical setting of...
Directed by Jessica Hausner
Austria, 2014
Presented in the Limelight of the Iffr 2015, a new program section focusing on features set for release across the Netherlands, Jessica Hausner’s Amour Fou is an atypical period drama, a biographical story about the lives, or yet better, deaths of the 19th century Berliners, Henriette Vogel and Heinrich von Kleist. Though “delightful” may appear to be a surprising choice of words for a story about a double suicide, that is precisely what the film is.
Hausner, an Austrian director and screenwriter, stylised both the film’s form and content, while maintaining a quiet and reserved aesthetic. The muted colour palette, the floral patterns and tapestries of Romantic-era Berlin, the delicate porcelain cups from which tea is sipped elegantly by gentlemen and gentlewomen lingering in their drawing rooms, contemplating the human rights of peasants, poetry and death, the theatrical setting of...
- 2/23/2015
- by Tina Poglajen
- SoundOnSight
The weirdly compelling story of 19th-century author Heinrich von Kleist’s dark desire for a married woman has an undertone of absurdity
Jessica Hausner’s Amour Fou is a strange tragicomic chamber piece based on the life of the 19th-century author Heinrich von Kleist. The film is as carefully composed and disquieting as earlier Hausner films such as Lourdes (2009) and Hotel (2004) but more inert, more deathly: an effect entirely deliberate.
It is set in the Berlin of the Romantic era, where von Kleist has had a sensational success with his 1808 novel The Marquise of O. Christian Friedel – who played the kindly schoolteacher in Haneke’s The White Ribbon – is Heinrich himself, overwhelmed at despair at the human condition and longing for death. Conceiving a doomed passion for a young married woman Henriette Vogel (Birte Schnoeink), he tries to persuade her to join him in a suicide pact, having failed to...
Jessica Hausner’s Amour Fou is a strange tragicomic chamber piece based on the life of the 19th-century author Heinrich von Kleist. The film is as carefully composed and disquieting as earlier Hausner films such as Lourdes (2009) and Hotel (2004) but more inert, more deathly: an effect entirely deliberate.
It is set in the Berlin of the Romantic era, where von Kleist has had a sensational success with his 1808 novel The Marquise of O. Christian Friedel – who played the kindly schoolteacher in Haneke’s The White Ribbon – is Heinrich himself, overwhelmed at despair at the human condition and longing for death. Conceiving a doomed passion for a young married woman Henriette Vogel (Birte Schnoeink), he tries to persuade her to join him in a suicide pact, having failed to...
- 2/5/2015
- by Peter Bradshaw
- The Guardian - Film News
The German film industry is mourning the passing of film-maker Helma Sanders-Brahms, one of the leading women directors of the New German Cinema with a broad international following, at the age of 73 after a long illness.
Over the course of a 40 year career, Sanders-Brahms wrote and directed 16 fiction films and seven documentaries, including Beneath The Paving Stones is the Beach (1975), Shirin’s Wedding (1976), Heinrich (1976/77), Germany, Pale Mother (1980), The Future Of Emily (1984), and more recently Geliebte Clara (2008).
“She was like not other a committed and passionate film-maker, active in documentaries as well in fiction films,” said Ulrich Gregor, former head of the Berlinale’s Forum. “Her film Germany, Pale Mother is a milestone in German film history. Her death opens a painful rift in the film landscape.“
It was only this February that Germany, Pale Mother - voted in the Us as one of the “Classics of Cinema” - was presented in a reconstructed and digitally restored original...
Over the course of a 40 year career, Sanders-Brahms wrote and directed 16 fiction films and seven documentaries, including Beneath The Paving Stones is the Beach (1975), Shirin’s Wedding (1976), Heinrich (1976/77), Germany, Pale Mother (1980), The Future Of Emily (1984), and more recently Geliebte Clara (2008).
“She was like not other a committed and passionate film-maker, active in documentaries as well in fiction films,” said Ulrich Gregor, former head of the Berlinale’s Forum. “Her film Germany, Pale Mother is a milestone in German film history. Her death opens a painful rift in the film landscape.“
It was only this February that Germany, Pale Mother - voted in the Us as one of the “Classics of Cinema” - was presented in a reconstructed and digitally restored original...
- 5/28/2014
- by screen.berlin@googlemail.com (Martin Blaney)
- ScreenDaily
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.