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Heartbeats AKA Les amours imaginaires
R2 - United Kingdom - Network Review written by and copyright: Paul Lewis (23rd September 2011). |
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The Film
 Les amours imaginaires/Heartbeats (Xavier Dolan, 2010) 
The second film by young Canadian director Xavier Dolan, Heartbeats focuses on a ménage-a-trois. Like Dolan’s first film, J’ai tué ma mere (I Killed My Mother, 2009), Heartbeats exhibits an obsession with cinema and, especially, the films of the various ‘New Waves’ – including the French New Wave/Nouvelle Vague (for example, Francois Truffaut’s similar study of a ménage-a-trois, Jules et Jim, 1962) and the Hong Kong New Wave (in particular, Dolan references the films of Wong Kar-wai and, especially, the millennial romance In the Mood for Love, 2000). Heartbeats focuses on three Quebec twenty-somethings: Francis (or ‘Frank’, to his friends; played by Dolan himself), his friend Marie (Monia Chokri) and the object of both Francis and Marie’s desire, Nicolas (Niels Schneider). It is an energetic film that opens with a quote from French writer Alfred de Musset, ‘The only truth is love beyond reason’, which forms the lynchpin for the narrative that follows: both Francis and Marie’s (unrequited) love/lust for Nicolas is indeed ‘beyond reason’, and their competition for his feelings threatens to tear apart their longstanding friendship. 
This deceptively simple narrative is told in an energetic and colourful way, with Dolan making copious allusions to art and cinema history: for example, in one scene Nicolas is visually compared to both Michelangelo’s David (under the gaze of Marie) and the art of Jean Cocteau (under the gaze of Francis); Monia Chokri’s retro dresses and her constant smoking seem to allude to the iconography associated with Maggie Cheung’s character in Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love. (In one of several sequences set during a party, Frank says that Marie’s dress ‘is a tad anachronistic’ after she has been called, by another party guest, ‘a 1950s housewife’. Marie responds by telling Frank, ‘This [the dress] is vintage, deary’. ‘Not everything that’s vintage should come back’, Frank asserts.) The film also mimics Wong Kar-wai’s obsessive, fetishistic use of slow-motion and retro chic music, and Dolan frequently presents us with fetishistic slow-motion tracking shots and fragmented close-ups of parts of his actor’s bodies: in one scene, accompanied on the soundtrack by Dalida’s cover of the French version of Cher’s 1966 hit ‘Bang Bang’, we are presented with a montage of close-ups of Monia Chokri’s buttocks, her legs, Dolan’s own shoes, his hands, his chest and, especially, his hair. All of the characters in this film seem to be equally objectified. Two almost Godard-esque sex scenes – one between Marie and her lover, and a later scene between Frank and his lover – are presented as a mirror-image of one another: as (accompanied on the soundtrack by Bach) Marie and her partner make love before sharing pillow talk, all under the gaze of a red filter (recalling the opening scene of Godard’s Le Mepris, 1963), their bodies are fragmented by a montage of close-ups of their faces, hands, Marie’s breast. In the later scene between Frank and his lover, the couple are presented in a similarly disjointed montage, this time presented under a green filter. Dolan also makes (excessive) use of Nouvelle Vague-esque jump cuts throughout the film. However, whereas in I Killed My Mother, Dolan’s pastiche of various techniques associated with the New Waves (and especially with Wong Kar-wai’s films) seemed naturalistic and suited to the material, the interminable fetishistic slow-motion shots of people’s shoes, clothes, etc, sometimes seem here like an affectation and frequently threaten to stop the narrative in its tracks. Some of them, such as Marie and Frank’s protracted arrival at a party, are stretched to breaking point.  
Dolan also punctuates the narrative with non-diegetic, documentary-style inserts of Frank and Marie’s friends discussing their relationships with relationships, much like the monochrome interviews that separate individual sequences in Rory Kelly’s 1994 postmodern romantic drama Sleep With Me. These inserts are confessional in tone and revolve around the theme of making mistakes in love (‘We write twenty… twenty-five texts a day [….] But of course, I fall for that fucking arrogant prick Jean-Marc, who takes forever to answer my emails. I’m such a dumbass’, one young woman declares) and sexuality, with one of the interviewees making explicit reference to the Kinsey Scale of sexuality and asserting, with relevance for the Marie-Nicolas-Frank relationship, that ‘You can’t be 50-50. Straight is straight, and gay is gay’. This excess of style is subordinate to the film’s exploration of shallow, narcissistic youth, and here lies the film’s biggest hurdle: the characters are difficult to sympathise with, often behaving like spoilt, arrogant youths whose navel-gazing discourse about their relationships eventually becomes wearying. The film also seems unsure as to whether it is an ironic portrait of narcissistic youth or a celebration of it, and there is considerable ambiguity as to how straight-faced Dolan is in his exploration of these vain and shallow twenty-somethings who, ironically, are pretentious in their over-eager, po-faced denouncement of pretentiousness. (After seeing a play with Nicolas, Marie refers to the characters in the drama as ‘pseudo-borderlines with their pain fetish as an escape from existential ennui… Fuck off’, before adding, apparently unaware of the irony, that ‘They just need to get laid’.) 
It’s an enjoyable, visually interesting film that may nevertheless alienate some viewers due to its protagonists’ vanity and self-obsession. In a couple of scenes, Dolan also skirts on the edge of bad taste: a sequence in which Frank masturbates whilst covering his face with Nicolas’ vest, becoming excited by the odour of Nicolas’ sweat, before being interrupted by Nicolas’ mother (played by Anne Dorval, who also appeared in I Killed My Mother) seems intended to be funny but simply seems as tacky as the crude gags in Hollywood teen comedies like American Pie (Paul Weitz, 1999), and a visual metaphor clearly meant to suggest fellatio (as, around a campfire, Nicolas teasingly feeds Frank a marshmallow) is protacted almost to the point of tedium, as if Dolan is insistently asking the audience, ‘Have you got it yet? … Do you get it? … Got it?’. Both of these ideas probably worked better on paper. 
Dolan is an interesting filmmaker to watch, and he is clearly in love with the medium, but Heartbeats is a slightly disappointing successor to his assured debut I Killed My Mother. Heartbeats is closest in tone to Bertolucci’s The Dreamers (2003), although the young Dolan doesn’t have the maturity of Bertolucci, and consequently Dolan’s exploration of unrequited love and failed relationships sometimes ‘falls flat’. Some viewers will find Heartbeats lacking in substance, and Dolan’s fetishisation of his own body may encourage assertions that the film is a vanity project; on the other hand, other viewers will revel in its excess of style. Hopefully, Dolan will find more ‘meaty’ material for his next film. The film is uncut and runs for 96:40 mins (PAL).
Video
Presented in 1.85:1, with anamorphic enhancement, the film gets a good presentation on this DVD release. Regardless of its other weaknesses, the film is very handsomely shot, with an excellent use of colour and some incredibly striking compositions. 
Audio
Audio is presented via a choice of Dolby Digital 5.1 or two-channel stereo (both in the original French). The 5.1 track is rich and showcases some of the effective examples of ‘found music’ that punctuate the film. Optional English subtitles are provided.
Extras
Interviews: - Monia Chokri Interview (9:43) - Niels Schneider Cinemoi Spotlight Interview (7:01) Trailer (1:01). Monia Chokri interview Chokri reveals that she became involved in the film due to her friendship with Dolan. She talks about her character, suggesting that Marie has two different patterns of behaviour: how she behaves when she is around other people, and how she behaves when she is alone. She says that ‘at the beginning, Marie is kind of a pain in the ass for everyone. She’s so ironic and tough’ but at a certain point ‘you realises she’s probably the most fragile character’ in the film. Chokri also discusses her costumes and working with Dolan. She suggests that Dolan is very friendly on the set and creates ‘this kind of family around him’. Niels Scneider interview Schneider outlines the plot of the film and talks about the ambiguity of his character, Nicolas, suggesting he’s a blank cipher on which ‘everyone can project their [fantasy] on this character’. He talks about how he was approached by Dolan after appearing in the 2009 drama Everything is Fine (dir: Yves Christian Fournier). He also discusses working with Monia Chokri and talks about Dolan’s style as a director, suggesting that ‘there’s always a depth behind everything’ – not shot is unmotivated – and that Dolan ‘really knows how to mix tragedy and comedy’. Both interviews are in English.
Overall
A visually interesting but slightly frustrating film, Heartbeats stretches its narrative to breaking point through Dolan’s use of slow-motion and the non-diegetic interviews with peripheral characters. It’s an interesting film, but some may find the narcissistic protagonists difficult to engage with. Nevertheless, it's a remarkable achievement for such a young director. (However, this reviewer found Dolan's directorial debut, I Killed My Mother, a much more satisfying experience.) This DVD release contains a very good presentation of the film, with some illuminating interviews with Chokri and Schneider. Heartbeats is available individually, or as part of Network's Xavier Dolan boxed set La Folie d'Amour, which also includes I Killed My Mother and Laurence Anyways.  For more information, please visit the homepage of Network. This review has been kindly sponsored by: 
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