‘Tis the season for spending time in the warm and cozy indoors. I’ve seen quite a few movies in the past month in an effort to get up to speed on contemporary cinema and also take refuge from the blustery winter upon us. Most recently I went to Film Forum in the West Village to catch Michael Haneke’s Amour, a languorous and understated work compared to his previous dramas (think Caché).

Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva in Amour

The psychological heaviness that is a hallmark of Haneke’s cinematic sensibility definitely came through. Amour was a devastating and beautiful film. Lead actress Emmanuelle Riva is an Oscar nominee for Best Actress, setting a new record as the oldest contender in her category at age 85. How strange and wonderful for Riva’s career to surge into international prominence again, half a century after her iconic performance in the French New Wave classic Hiroshima mon amour.

Riva and Eiji Okada in Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima mon amour

Time is a funny, elastic thing.