Heartbeats review

Starring Xavier Dolan, Monia Chokri, and Niels Schneider. Written and directed by Xavier Dolan.

Love’s a bitch and nobody knows it any better than Xavier Dolan. After his first critically acclaimed and self-produced film, I Killed My Mother, Dolan returns to the scene with something a little funnier and much more stylish.

The 21 (yes, twenty-one!) year old Canadian actor-turned-director’s latest, Heartbeats (aka its international title, Love, Imagined), is all about love and heartbreak (did the title give it away?), and is undeniably cool.

Dolan’s Heartbeats begins with two friends, Francis (played by Dolan himself) and Marie (Monia Chokri). He is a handsome, young gay guy. She is a cute, retro-dressing girl. Nothing could come between them, it seems, until they meet the new boy from out of town, Nicolas (Niels Schneider). They both immediately fall in love with the stranger, and begin passive-aggressively fighting with one another in hopes of commanding his attention, and ultimately, winning his affection.

Dolan begins the film with a quote, “The only truth is love beyond reason.” He continues this focus, and each scene is a further examination of the pain caused by unrequited love and adoration, and building up unrealistic expectations. In this way, the film is sad, but also very funny.

Periodically, in series of short interviews throughout the film, different young people speak openly and comedically about their (mostly negative) dating experiences. One girl describes waiting on the Internet for hours waiting on email responses from a crush. Another guy describes the homosexuality scale, which rates how gay a person is, depending on their sexual tendencies, from 1 to 5.

The film’s simple plot, a love triangle, and quick story-progressing scenes might’ve left the runtime a tad short. However, Dolan makes use of many long, drawn out slow-mo scenes (for example, in montage when the two friends dress-to-impress before seeing Nicolas) in homage to Wong Kar-wai.

He also makes use of blue and red direct Godard-esque lighting in some cut scenes. Couple this with a hip soundtrack (one particular song, “Bang Bang”, plays several times) and Dolan has a slick, stylistic film sure to attract a hip, young crowd.

It’s unclear exactly what Dolan wants his audience to take away from their viewing. It seems any commentary Dolan has about love is purely surface level and superficial. And at times the bare-bones story seems more of a vehicle for Dolan to show off his cool camera movements, lighting, wardrobe, and shot composition than to progress the film.

Although the film is funny, and some of Dolan’s random cuts scenes are used successfully to the effect (think falling marshmallows over Nicolas’ shirtless body in one of Francis’ dream sequences).

The young cast is able to carry the film without problem, with Dolan having the strongest performance as the heartbroken young, intelligent gay man who leaves a mark on his wall each time he is rejected (and his bathroom wall is full of them).

One of the most unsettling elements of the film is how pathetic Dolan’s main characters are. Representative of the attitude of most young people and the feverishly love-stricken, Francis and Marie are putty in the hands of the dim, unassuming, and flirtatious (although he does read!) Nicolas. From buying extremely expensive birthday gifts to hanging out where he might be, the two best friends are tragic characters who immediately seem destined for inevitable heartbreak. But perhaps that’s the point.

Regardless of its problems, Heartbeats was met with warm reception in Cannes and shows that young director Dolan is no one-trick pony. While this film is a bit overly ambitious in regards to style, it’s clear that Dolan has much more up his sleeve than suggested by first film.