Synopsis
Heinrich wishes to conquer death through love, and when he meets Henriette, the wife of a business acquaintance, she expresses interest in a suicide pact when she learns she has a terminal illness.
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Cast
- Christian FriedelHeinrich
- Stephan GrossmannFriedrich Louis Vogel
- Katharina SchüttlerSophie
- Hana Sofia LopesOlder Sister
- Eva-Maria KurzRelative
- Sandra HüllerMarie
- Gustav Peter WöhlerHypnotist
- Peter JordanAdam Müller
- Alissa WilmsMaid Dorte
- Paraschiva DragusPauline
Recommendations
- 88
Slant Magazine
Jessica Hausner is less interested in historical revisionism than mining this real-life tragedy for its existential thrust. - 83
The A.V. Club
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. - 80
Empire
A daring, dark satire strewn with allusions to modern times. - 80
Time Out
One thing’s certain: This is no swoony love story. It intoxicates all the same. - 80
The Hollywood Reporter
What’s finally tragic about their destiny of choice is not that the couple succeeded in becoming immortal together but that everything leading up to their death was the result of very banal actions and shot through with an extreme sense of loneliness. - 80
Variety
The Austrian writer-director gradually locates the emotional pulse in a picture that plays less like a doomed romance than a seriocomic anatomy of one, subjecting its characters and their bubble of high privilege to sharply critical yet quietly affecting scrutiny. - 75
The Playlist
What makes Amour Fou a fascinating, if at times frustratingly idle experience, is that it seems to be saying so much with its upfront style, injections of black humor, and focus on stifled feminine disposition, yet still feels disappointingly unresponsive when mulling it over in your head. - 70
Village Voice
Henriette's last thought will forever be a mystery, but the grandeur of Romanticism is tartly, pleasingly demystified.
