pyrocitor
Too often, crucial nuance is lost in translation for English-speaking audiences, and 21-year old French-Canadian Xavier Dolan's second film as writer/director/star/costume designer (all right, we get it ) is a perfect example. While its English title, Heartbeats, is appropriately poetic and fluttery, its original French title, Les Amours Imaginaires, ("The Imaginary Loves"), is so on-point it verges on a spoiler warning. But what isn't lost in translation is Dolan's keen, immaculate talent, and his rare foray into comparative levity - "romantic comedy" by way of cattiness and heartbreak - may be frothier than his average fare, but it's infectiously watchable, and wickedly amusing. Dolan is clearly enamoured with early François Truffaut: his debut, I Killed My Mother, is a direct shout out to The 400 Blows, while Heartbeats is unapologetically a functional remake of Jules & Jim's steadily imploding friendship-turned-love-triangle. There's a deliberateness to this comparison, however, as Dolan employs this juxtaposition between the Bohemian-chic of WWI- era France and 21st century Montreal hipster culture to tease out the timelessness of love, lust, and folly in ambiguously intimate friendships. The ensuing proceedings are as delightfully droll as you'd expect, as Dolan deftly dances back and forth between his two lust-struck protagonists, forcing viewers to continuously reconsider their sympathies and allegiances as each sequence is filtered through their alternating points of view. The film feels almost tangibly laden with sexual tension, but Dolan continually, increasingly challenges us: is this the case, or is it a case of our protagonists (or we, the viewers) misguidedly supplying it? Thankfully, Dolan proceeds through this murder mystery of flirtation with a teasing playfulness. His outlandishly hip stylistics - scenes lit in bold, single-colour pastel lighting; snarky, Wong-Kar Wai style slow-mo walking sequences coupled with a cover of Nancy Sinatra's "Bang Bang, My Baby Shot Me Down" as leitmotif (though a cameo of House of Pain's "Jump Around" is more fun); at one point a character is even showered in slow-motion falling marshmallows - set the tone perfectly: suave, artsy, and only retroactively coded as self-reflexively tongue-in-cheek. For those who didn't wear their $455 tangerine cashmere sweaters to the screening, the film may skirt the line of becoming too insufferably hipster to bear (a poem penned on a typewriter mailed in a black envelope with a wax seal? Please ) if satire - occasionally excruciatingly awkwardly so - isn't your strong suit. It isn't helped by a second act lag, as the initial smiles prompted by the characters' brewing hysterics fade somewhat. But have patience: confident as they may seem, the proceedings and characters are meant to play as human, but still ridiculous, and we're given sneaky reminders along the way to tide us by. Finally, just when we feel like our sympathies, such as they are, have finally settled by the film's climax, Dolan, with another neat, hilarious reversal, turns the tables, and ties it all together with a Forever 21 bow, complete with a sublime 'anti-moral' that brings cringes and laughs in equal measures. Dolan's mediation of himself as star is droll in itself – amusingly, he initially makes no pretence at unbiased treatment of which 'team' viewers are invited to cheer for, though ripples invite sympathy or scorn for all parties involved through. Regardless, Dolan's acting proves just as committed as his directorial work – passionately emotive, with a bold anti-charisma alternatively sweet and pathetic, and replete with the subtlest tics to convey volumes of awkwardness or loneliness. Monia Chokri is somewhat less accessible, but still gives a boldly cold, clipped performance, her reserve and stylishly antiquated wardrobe serving as protective armour, fiercely conveying her longing in a deeply rooted, if not always wholly sympathetic, fashion. Finally, as the object of their affections, Niels Schneider pitches his cheeky, ambiguously alluring charm exactly right, and managing to convey a surprising amount of paradoxical sentiments with one cryptic phrase: "Love me or leave me." To ride out a metaphor Dolan would doubtlessly detest, Heartbeats is a macaron of a movie: colourful, sweet, chic, and deceptively dense, but a fleeting, albeit delicious, trifle. It's lots of fun, immaculately constructed, and containing plenty of hearty character beats, but its deliberately shallow plot doesn't keep up with its stylizations enough for it to linger as much as some of Dolan's meatier, more serious work. Still, 'fun' is a crucially rare word in most critically regarded Canadian cinema, so, for this alone, Heartbeats is a worthwhile and highly enjoyable outing by one of the most promising contemporary voices in the industry. If this is Dolan's indictment on contemporary youth culture, I'd be terrified to see his take on senior citizenhood, a-la Amour -8/10
chaos-rampant
Nothing new transpires here, a boy and girl fall for the same boy who's new in town, a vacant hunk exuding aftershave ad sex. I question why either of these two very spirited beings would waste their time so, but the film isn't made from a point in life where choices have cosmic import, it still has time and youth to spare, wounds to receive, a blank first page to be written on.The filmmaker was barely 20 years old when he made this. What shall we say to him, why don't you have the soul of a 50 year old? It's enough that he is creative, more so than most of us at that point. He's the main actor, writer, and, it seems, the fashion eye behind the whole thing, the one who would have the sense to put his leading girl in the vintage dress, himself in the fiery red jacket. The film is empty, in the sense French New Wave is, which this derives inspiration from. It offers the amalgamation of moments, breaking up story to re-arrange fragments of it in a room that characters walk through. A lot of it is simply stylized, more directly via Wong Kar Wai; languid smoke, slow motion walking in the rain, pensive touch. A lot is simply a matter of having the fashion sense to coordinate colors and bodies of image, music video inspired.It does reach me a bit vacant. But that's all part of the life lived up to that point, not omission by ignorance. I'll have this than attempts at forced professionalism in the hopes of landing a Hollywood gig. It's vacancy in the sense of a capacity to be filled by all the stuff that come with baring soul. Who knows, in time he may grow out of dressing the seduction, or not. But you'll see here someone who has a natural fondness for people, how faces can give away a hint of inmost troubles, reluctance, awkwardness, glimmers of yearning. It shows an interested human being who wants to find that elusive life no words ever do justice, only breath. The most fundamental tool in creative life (and any life that wants to perceive clearly, be alert to its surroundings) is a love for observing. This seems much harder to learn than all the other things. He has this and I'm happy to make the acquaintance.
angelika-esquillo
There is undeniably a profound fusion of parallelism in this film coming from its opening salvo - the confessional scenes featuring people and their views on love until unfolding its relevance to the main characters. There is a thin line of simile showing how they all define love - how they and we tend to fall for the idea of it but run away once we are caught in its pit.The creative treatment of the director reflects much of his adeptness to communicate beyond the superficial - there is an interplay of lighting with sounds, the slow motion of scenes that matter, the elimination of words and letting the eyes speak of dialogs we all have in mind - there is a cobweb of HARMONY in this film.The plot which is initially defined as "love triangle" is highly underestimated as this is beyond your typical love triangle where two people are strangling themselves for the love of one. This speaks of the love triangle we humanities have within ourselves. There were insecurities, fears of rejection, thirst for freedom and acceptance.I am still hungover with its soundtrack, its symbolisms (the rain and umbrella scene), its script about crossing oceans for the one you love and ending up wanting just the distance, its last scene which will make you think - it wasn't a bizarre love triangle after all. It was just the two of them from the start and they just wanted another soul to tease, to love.
