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Day 5 @ MSPIFF 2015: 'Amour Fou' Reviewed

Writer/director Jessica Hausner's latest work is weirdly captivating. The visual style, with people standing stiff as paintings and stoic Weimaraner dogs seemingly everywhere, sets it apart from so many movies these days while simultaneously cementing the movie in the historical frame of German Romanticism. Those familiar with Werner Herzog's Heart of Glass, in which most of the cast members were actually hypnotized, will have an idea of how this movie looks -- lots of natural-looking light, frames within a frame, and scenes shot from behind.

Amour Fou's based-on-a-true story adds to its strangeness. In it, the poet Heinrich von Kleist (Christian Friedel) is desperately looking for a girl with which he can commit suicide. Life oppresses this tenderhearted, and extremely talented, writer to such a degree that he feels he cannot continue suffering from under it. However, he doesn't seek death so much as he does the chance to transcend the horrors of life through love. He's a romantic, after all, and so he's looking for a woman who understands him so well, and loves him so much, that she too will choose suicide over an existence that hurts the soft-spoken, doe-eyed poet. The manner of death to be agreed upon? The poet plans to shoot the girl, and then himself. With dueling pistols.

Life, of course, isn't so romantic. The poet, at first, tries to get his cousin to consent to his plan, but she's not really on his morbid wavelength. Then, the poet meets the pretty and depressed wife of an aristocrat and business associate. Her name is Henriette Vogel (Birte Schnoeink), and she becomes enamored with Heinrich's plan once she learns that she has a tumor in her stomach and comes to see her current life as a pointless and loveless charade. Yet, the poet refuses this poor girl, at first, because she isn't willing to die purely for love of him. The situation adds a bizarre comic touch to the film, which is almost too depressed in all its other mannerisms.

What exactly the film is trying to say is tricky to pin down. While the story of Heinrich and Henriette is true, to a degree, Hausner doesn't seem to be too interested in the emotional side of their dark tale as much as the personal and political mechanisms of the Romantic world around it. Perhaps, the work seeks to show the contrast between the period's rigid social structure and its self-proclaimed admiration for art, science and philosophy. After all, the real tragedy here is that the people are so swept up in grand Ideas that they miss out on understanding each other.

Amour Fou is playing at 7:30.

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Cheatin-1
(credit: Film Society of Minneapolis St. Paul)

Other Highlights For Monday, April 13

Cheatin' (Bill Plympton, USA) As the title suggests, this hand-drawn animation, which includes about 40,000 drawings by the artist, is about adultery. When a couple finds another woman pulling them apart, hope is placed in the hands of a soul-transferring device. There's also a magician and bumpercars. (7:00)

Difret (Zeresenay Berhane Mehari, Ethiopia/USA) Shot entirely on location in Ethiopia, Mehari's first film follows a girl who's kidnapped to be in an arranged marriage and her fight to escape. In her struggle, she meets a young lawyer through which she encounters a different, modern world. (9:15)

The Strongest Man (Kenny Riches, USA) When two friends attend a meditation class in Miami, they begin a journey. Beef, a twentysomething who considers himself the strongest dude in the world, and Conan, his Korean friend, search the streets for their respective spirit animals. Silly situations, and conflict, arise. (9:40)

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For the festival schedule, and a complete listing of all the movies being shown, click here. Ticket information is available here.

Throughout the entirety of the 2015 Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival, WCCO.com will be spotlighting one notable movie each day, along with other notable screenings. To see WCCO.com's complete coverage on the MSPIFF, click here.

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