French Canadian Xavier Dolan’s narrative with a documentary edge, Heartbeats (2010), begins with a quote by the 19th century French poet Alfred Musset: there is a real world that reasons about love. ("Il n’ya a de vrai au monde que d´raissoner d’amour"). The original French title is Les Amours Imaginaires (Imaginary Lovers), selected for the Festival de Cannes fortnight last May.
Heartbeats is an interesting stylish film with an inventive and imaginative use of the camera. In the opening minutes, three young people speak about love while the camera changes focal lengths with abrupt close-ups and pull backs. Fortunately this framing is not the focus of the film. Instead Dolan launches into the narrative thread.
Three people - Francis (played by the director himself), Marie ( Monia Chokri), and Nicolas (Niels Schneider) engage in what does not seem so much as a reasonable encounter with love as a very bizarre one wrought with tension and power struggles.
The film is a series of scenes with a lot of stylistic posing. The relationship between Francis and Nicolas is homoerotic but it is Marie who gets the first onscreen sex scene with another boy shot in red tint. Xavier in green tint is shown with another man, the second sex scene much tamer. Another scene in blue tint completes the sequences of physical love. The three sex scenes are unconnected to the so-called love triangle. After a rather long party scene, the three are shown sleeping in the same bed. How they got there, we don’t know. This is why the French title makes sense. There are certainly no heart beats to this hygienically sealed exposé on human relationships. But the frivolity of young love is resounding.
As is seemingly customary in a French language treatment of love, the obligatory violoncello solo Suite no 1 by Bach hums in the background. Bang bang by Sony Bono sung by the late Italian vocalist Dalida is a good choice, though overdone. And what would a French language film be without a lot of smoking, drinking, eating - and café moments. Dolan's second feature is an accomplishment that certainly should inspire budding filmmakers. Now playing in San Francisco at Landmark Theatres.
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