19th century Berlin. At a society soirée, the poet Heinrich von Kleist shares his existential unease with his cousin and friend Marie. He offers to help them both along by organizing their suicides. When she refuses, he turns to Henriette, a young wife, who also rejects the proposal. But when she discovers she has an incurable disease, Henriette is plagued by doubt.

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Austrian director Jessica Hausner’s movies are definitely strange. First noticed in Cannes in the Un Certain Regard program for Lovely Rita in 2001 and then Hotel in 2004, she filmed Sylvie Testud and Léa Seydoux in Lourdes, her most commercial movie to date. And her fourth film, Amour fou, is even more opaque than the others. Loosely inspired by the suicide of the poet Heinrich von Kleist, filmed in a theater atmosphere (flat decorations, flat light, wide and fixed shots), punctuated by musical breaks, this curious object is totally overpowering, artificial and nebulous. Its presence at Cannes, again in Un Certain Regard, will in any case add new arguments to detractors of the festival who believe that some filmmakers get in regardless of the quality of their films.