I love Michael Haneke’s films, especially this one and The White Ribbon. I was also thinking about including [Florian Zeller’s] The Father because it’s quite similar in a lot of ways, mainly set within the confines of a quite posh flat. I haven’t watched Amor as much as because I found it quite hard. But then I found The Father really difficult too. I think I pretty much had the culmination of a breakdown at the end of my second viewing of it but it was quite a positive thing in the end. I’d been drinking beer that I didn’t know was 7 per cent.
I was also thinking about Gaspar Noé’s Vortex. Those three films have a lot in common. But I’ve picked Amor because of the economy of it. There’s a scene near the start where it’s out on a balcony with little metal tables and they are having breakfast and I just thought that was the most perfect vision of love and marriage. And from there, it becomes a difficult situation but it’s unlike a lot of his films in that it’s not nihilistic. There is so much love in here, even in the horrible situation they find themselves in. I love it in his canon because it’s almost warm. They feel like real people reacting to the situation. It’s a difficult one to talk about to be honest.
