Back‘Amour’ gets Oscar love and an Indian distributor
The French movie will be released by PictureWorks in March
Premium(A still from the movie ‘Amour’)
Mumbai: Indian cineastes who resisted downloading or buying pirated DVDs of Michael Haneke’s Amour (Love) will soon be rewarded for their patience. Distributor PictureWorks is releasing the decorated French movie in March. Haneke’s austere yet affecting drama, whose most recent honour is the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, has been picking up trophy after trophy since it premiered last year at the Cannes Film Festival, where it won the top prize, the Palme D’or.
“I personally liked the movie when it was first screened at Cannes," said PictureWorks founder Avinaash Jumani. “It is an emotional film but I feel that it is a subject that can happen to anyone in love (amour)." PictureWorks will distribute Amour on an unspecified date in metropolises next month.
Amour is the story of Anne and Georges, an elderly couple whose relationship is pushed to the limit after Anne suffers a stroke. The movie stars French acting greats Emmanuelle Riva and Jean-Louis Trintignant, both of whom were also nominated in the best acting categories. Amour was also nominated in the Best Picture and Director slots, but lost out to Ben Affleck’s Argo and Ang Lee’s Life of Pi, respectively.
In his acceptance speech, Haneke thanked his wife for “supporting me since 30 years… You are the centre of my life". He also thanked his actors.
Amour has already been widely seen in India through official and unofficial means. It was screened at the Mumbai Film Festival and the International Film Festival of Kerala last year. The movie has been available through pirate networks for several months now. Its theatrical distribution might attract newer audiences who are willing to set aside time and money for a spare and serious-minded (and subtitled) treatment of the themes of ageing, long-term illness and mortality.
International cinema has so far failed to crack the Indian distribution puzzle. Countless foreign films fail to cross local censorship hurdles while multiplex goers haven’t shown the enthusiasm needed to sustain a decent theatrical run. Although the India rights of yet another Oscar-nominated and critically acclaimed arthouse movie, Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, have been bought by Top Entertainment, there is no news yet on when it will be shown in cinemas. Meanwhile, bootleg copies of The Master are widely available in cities like Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore, proving that pirates have often served the needs of Indian cinephiles better than distributors.
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