Amour Fou

On November 21, 1811, the German playwright and poet Heinrich von Kleist killed himself in a suicide pact with Henriette Vogel, a well-to-do government official's wife who left behind not only a grieving husband but also a young daughter. Writer-director Jessica Hausner uses this story to fashion a darkly comic portrait of angst-afflicting Prussian society during the Napoleonic era, following the melancholy writer as he proposes his joint-suicide scheme to a number of women over a period of months, all of whom decline the bizarre offer before he finds a taker in Vogel, who's just been told that she is suffering from a fatal illness (a diagnosis that turns out post-mortem to be mistaken). Hausner constructs the film as a series of static tableaux, many in the form of the staid musical performances that provided domestic entertainment during the early 19th century. With its stately pacing, painterly style, amateurishly-performed music, and deliberately stiff acting by Christian Friedel as Von Kleist, Birte Schnoeink as Henriette, and Stephan Grossmann as her husband, this cerebral exercise doesn't carry much emotional weight, but with its handsome sets and costumes, and meticulous attention to period detail, it will likely appeal to those who appreciate art cinema. Recommended. (F. Swietek)