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| Grade: B/B+ |
*This review was originally published at Movie Mezzanine.
“He has a rather melancholic disposition,” says one woman about the young 19th-century poet Heinrich von Kleist (Christian Friedel) in the opening minutes of Amour Fou. It’s an observation that can only be described as a gross understatement when considering the poet’s deteriorating mental state, as Kleist is morbidly obsessed with taking his own life. In modern parlance, he is clinically depressed, but as doctors tended to call it in Germany in 1811, he suffered from “ailments of a spiritual nature.” Such is the dry humor, paired with rigorous formality, that shapes the tone of Amour Fou, Jessica Hausner’s latest film—a robust, stylish, and acerbically comic take on Heinrich von Kleist’s final days with his lover Henriette Vogel.
The revisionist historical film begins with Heinrich’s search for a romantic partner, one with whom he can commit suicide, not live. His cousin, Marie (Sandra Huller) is fond of Heinrich, but finds the request outrageous. The poet’s affections for Marie never subside, but he resigns himself to seeking a new partner in death, whom he eventually finds in the already-wed Henriette Vogel (Birte Schnoink). Married into the upper echelons of German aristocracy, Henriette spends her bleak days practicing music with her daughter and anticipating the return to home of her husband, who is far more occupied with tax regulations and vicious elitism than his family.
Heinrich and Henriette’s paths converge among the haughty entourage
of German high society members whose casual disregard for the working
class is cartoonishly outdated and expertly incorporated into Hausner’s
rigid aesthetic. This amusingly evil group occupies pink castles and
sports grandiose hairdos that wouldn’t be entirely incongruous if they
showed up in The Grand Budapest Hotel. Hausner’s humor is
deadpan and vitriolic, vacillating between serious ruminations on
depression and farcical casualness about the banality of the world.
