Institute History
Description
German director Philip Gröning returns to the Sundance Film Festival (he last appeared with the political drama, The Terrorists, in 1993) with a visually striking love story, L'amour, L'argent, L'amour. A film of contrasts and associations, it combines a conventional narrative with formal pyrotechnics that readily display the director's fascinatingly unique point of view.
The story is fairly simple. A young man, just fired from his job at a scrapyard, meets a street-tough hooker, and they quickly, perhaps curiously, bond. He's an innocent; she's old beyond her years. He still lives with his mother; she has been on her own for a while. It's winter, and they mutually seek a revitalizing warmth and escape from the sordidness and coldness of the world they're living in. So they hit the road.
A road movie, a love story, a journey to the sea: Gröning relates a sort of modern fable of two people searching for a respite from the harshness of their lives. By using a structure and editing technique that fragments the voice of the narrative, he has transformed a traditional fairy tale into a poetic odyssey. The film won Gröning the Hessian Film Award for best director and Sabine Timoteo the Bronze Leopard at the Locarno Film Festival for her performance as Marie. L'amour, L'argent, L'amour is a film whose ideas and artistry amplify its emotional resonance and uniquely examine love in a new age.