Top 100 Most Anticipated Films of 2013: #82. Jessica Hausner’s Amour Fou

Amour Fou

Director/Writer: Jessica Hausner
Producer(s): TBA
U.S. Distributor: Rights Available
Cast: TBA

I got to know Jessica Hausner a little late in the game, the Austrian director wowed me with her minimalist portrait Lourdes (a Venice Film Festival selection) but she first made waves back in 2001 with her sophomore film, the Cannes Un Certain Regard selected Lovely Rita. Currently a bit past the funding stages, her sixth aptly titled Amour Fou is probably in the casting portion of the production.

Gist: Inspired by the life and death of the poet Heinrich von Kleist and his partner in death, Henriette Vogel, the deals with the ambivalence and absurdity inherent in the very concept of two people committing suicide because of their love for one another. Committing this act is the yearning to escape the inevitability of death through love, to avoid dying alone and to oppose all-powerful death by dictating the terms of one’s death. However, the fundamental absurdity lies in the fact that the joined act cannot be experienced jointly in any complete sense, since love is fickle and ambivalent, and everybody – in the end – must die alone.

Release Date: No dates have been announced for a shoot that will take place both in Vienna and Berlin. In order for this to break into a 2013 release calendar, it’ll have to shoot early and peak early at the Venice Film Festival. A 2014 showing is more likely.