Amour fou

Amour fou

In Berlin, 1811 the author of “Michael Kohlhaas,” “The Marquise of O,” and “The Prince of Homburg” took his own life next to the banks of Griebnitz Canal. Since then, his legacy has gone through a lot. It has been used by nationalist groups many times which includes the Nazis who destroyed it. His tombstone became a tourist attraction after years being visited by brooding young lovers wanting to sit in the shadow cast by one of Germany’s most famous romantic poets on the shores of Wannsee. Many writers credit him as an influence; several have adapted his books for stage and screen.

But there’s one part that has not been fully examined: Who was that woman they found with him that day? Before turning the gun on himself, Kleist killed Henriette Vogel, a friend who was married to a civil servant and had a small child. Letters written before her death suggest that this is what she wanted after finding out she had cancer. If you don’t know her name don’t worry. Her life and work have always been overshadowed by those of the man who murdered her. It is yet another instance where she becomes nothing more than an appendage to some great artist’s genius; reason enough for him still fascinate scholars and students two centuries later.

But what about the woman who enabled his misery? Doesnt she deserve as much attention as her more celebrated companion? After all, she was why he achieved immortality in the first place. Jessica Hausner thought so too, and with “Amour fou,” her latest film, goes some way towards addressing this imbalance in interest around suicide pacts throughout history . She has taken some dramatic license with events here but then again it is hard to believe no one over two hundred years ever wondered if Vogel getting shot point blank range through chest might not have been entirely voluntary.

At this point in her life, Henriette (Birte Schnoeink) is unsure about marriage and motherhood. She meets Heinrich (Christian Friedal) at a party where they are introduced; she knows his writing very well. He took an immediate liking to her, though she appears hesitant especially when she realizes how much he requires from anyone who catches his eye. He believes that his sadness cannot be cured and that there is only one way for him to stop feeling insignificant and hopeless but he does not want to do so alone. His companion(a wealthy socialite played by the always excellent Sandra Hüller has refused his request that they die together, choosing instead marriage.

Heinrich asks Henriette to kill herself with him because they share a dissatisfaction with aristocratic life that runs no deeper than the surface. Whether he recognizes in her a kindred spirit or merely an amenable personality whom he can persuade by means of pointed compliments into such an arrangement is not quite an open question. It would never occur to Henriette to contemplate suicide if she hadn’t recently been diagnosed with a fatal disease; why waste away before her husband and daughter when she could die for something instead?

Indeed, why? The film takes less of a given than it was at the time that Vogel was sick. Officially, she was going to die anyway. But reasonable doubt is created by the movie’s main interest being a woman who is subject to circumstances. Having turned from as much as her illness towards what’s coming next, Heinrich exploits Henriette’s nascent self and urges her towards his needs. All one has to do is look at Dominik Graf’s “Beloved Sisters” to see what Hausner’s take on Henriette Vogel might have done had she fallen in with a different romantic poet who might have told her ennui could be channeled productively rather than destructively.

Of course, there’s little hope that simple absence from Heinrich will do the trick of securing happiness ever after for poor Henriette. Observing how often his wife has been spending time around this drippy poet, her husband throws up his hands and offers to step aside so they can be together without stopping to consider what else there might be about another man that would draw his spouse away from him like this.

A few scenes indicate that were he more concerned with his wife’s psychological welfare (as opposed either immediate gratification or physical well-being), she might have avoided falling under Heinrich’s vague sway altogether. Both men are guilty even if only one has death on his mind; here passive masculinity usually a source of romantic counterpoint (the accommodating husband; the poet mad with longing) is presented as a smokescreen behind which lurks female self-determination.

Honestly told, the story of Henriette Vogel was never going to make pulses race as spectacle, but luckily there’s someone like Hausner in charge behind the camera. Ever since “Lovely Rita,” her endearingly prickly debut feature from 2001, Jessica Hausner has been chronicling the lives of terminally reticent European women with unmatched finesse, illustrating all the ways in which control can be wrested away from them by higher powers. With each new movie she’s honed her style further and further until it became nothing short of luminous calligraphy (including the sublime “Lourdes”).

The initial image of Henriette standing behind a massive bunch of flowers femininity made absurd and useless by the era makes it clear that there was nobody more suited to tell the story Henriette herself never wrote down. Next thing we know, we’re in the Vogel’s sitting room listening to a lady sing about the rapture of death, and Heinrich is reflected in the mirror on the wall just behind her.

Hausner found a perfect visual language to tell her story: aureate frames that talk for her characters when they can’t, and talk over them when they lie. She even finds a substitute for the dialogue Henriette attempts to have about her life. After watching the singer in the opening scene, Henriette proceeds to give a few small concerts of her own, singing while her daughter plays piano. In those moments, her grin betraying a welcome nervousness, a sense of satisfaction and place.

Hausner argues that she needed an outlet only she was given one that didn’t work. Significantly, Heinrich’s voiceover will bury the sound of her singing, his crises superseding his supposed friend’s joy. But all along Henriette is stuck in Hausner’s compositions: Doors cut rooms in half around her as if to restrict motion; windows give her only fleeting glimpses at a world she can’t enter; ornate wallpaper cages her within its natural order for houses like this one. She has no comfortable way to say what’s on her mind, and when she tries, nobody cares.

One of the final shots in “Amour fou” rhymes with an image near the end of “Lovely Rita,” only some details changed. The truth remains that between these movies Hausner has quietly evolved into one of the greatest directors alive (and still criminally under discussed), but she hasn’t blinked in looking at how wearying it is being disenfranchised as female.

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