The only
redeeming factor about Jessica Hausner's best known film to date Lourdes
(2010) was the performance of Sylvie Testud as the wheelchair bound Christine
who visits the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes for the healing properties of
its spring waters. Every thing else about the film was disappointing, as was
the Austrian directors fourth feature Amour fou (2014) for which she also
wrote the screenplay. Set in Berlin in 1818-1819 the story follows the 34 year old
German writer Heinrich von Kleist (Christian Friedel), who had a successful
novel published in 1808 entitled The
Marquise of O, and his 31 year old married lover Henriette Vogal (Birte
Schnoink) in the conclusive stages of there lives. Kleist is a strange
character who wants nothing more than to commit suicide but wants someone to
join him in a death pact. Marie (Sandra Huller) a young lady he intended to
marry refuses to take part in Kleist terrible deed so he sets out to find
someone else to accompany him in this bizarre undertaking. When Mrs Vogal, who
suffers from an undiagnosed illness, captivates our writer he knows that he has
finally found his true companion.
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| Christain Friedel and Birte Schnoink play the doomed lovers. |
This soporific
movie with its cheerless plot about death and depression does at times bring to
mind the dourness of some of Fassbinder’s
work and in fact Christian Friedel could actually be the young German filmmaker
with his similarity in stature. Although one cannot criticise the acting, it's
cinematography, the design or its colour palette it’s a rather uninteresting
take on the 'tortured' artist genre which, at a screening I attended, managed
to send a large percentage of its audience to sleep.
