L'amour, l'amour; toujours l'amour (avec les chansons et les cigarettes)
Written: Jul 27 '08 (Updated Aug 06 '08)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Paris and the other stars
Cons: songs are unmemorable
The Bottom Line: If something can be "terminally French," this is.
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| Stephen_Murray's Full Review: Love Songs |
"Les chansons d'amour" (2007) is one of many movies titled "Love Songs" in English. I thought that only Alain Resnais was continuing the Jaques Demy tradition, making French melodramas in which characters burst into song as they do in this movie directed by Christophe Honoré (who directed its star Louis Garrel in "Ma mère" and "Dans Paris"). I have to start by saying that I am unimpressed by the songs in "Chansons" and in the Resnais musical melodramas --and those in Godard's "Une femme est une femme" (much as I like Ana Karina). For that matter, there was only one memorable song in "Les parapluies de Cherbourg"/"The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" (1964) -- though Michel Legrand recycled "I will wait for you" so extensively that it seemed that the whole movie was that one song).
For me, movie musicals are primarily about dancing (Band Wagon, Singin' in the Rain, Busby Berkeley ones, et al.), or at least production numbers (the umbrellas shot from above in "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg") not about nonsingers singing in closeup (as, apparently, in "Mamma Mia!). The lyrics have some dash, but Alex Beaupain's tunes are pedestrian. In fact, given that a number of the songs involve characters idling in the street, the songs are literally pedestrian! (I don't think that singing into cell phones while within sight of each other lifts above the "pedestrian" label...)
At least since Bertolucci's "The Dreamers," Garrel has specialized in somewhat kinky characters -- or characters who are sexually but not emotionally precocious in fraught relationships, including the incestuous one in "Ma mère," threesomes in "The Dreamers" and "Les chansons d'amour." He is also a master of self-deprecating humor.
In the first act (of three) in "Les chansons d'amour" Garrel's character, Ismaël Bénoliel, is sleeping with two women who seem to be having most of the sex with each other: his long-term girlfriend Julie Pommeraye (Ludivine Sagnier) and his co-worker (on a magazine) Alice (Clotilde Hesme). He charms most everyone, especially a college student named Erwann (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) who pursues Ismaël with some success after tragedy breaks up the ménage à trois. In between Julie's sister, Jeanne (Chiara Mastroianni) suffocates him as she attempts to ensure that his grief does not swallow him.
Erwann, BTW, is the younger brother of a Gwendal (Yannick Renier) whom (the predominantly lesbian) Alice was seeing for a while. Much is made of his being Breton. (Honoré was born in Carhaix in central Brittany.)
Having recently stayed close to the Place de la Bastille, I especially liked seeing the golden winged God of Liberty on the Colonne de Juliet in the plaza where the royal prison once stood. And other scenes of Paris. (No Eiffel Tower, no churches, no museums -- not typical tourist Paris... mostly shot in the 10th arrondissement.)
I think the blonde and the blond (Sagnier and Leprince-Ringuet) are the standouts in the cast. Garrel smokes a lot, mopes a lot, has bursts of whimsy--and has the last word(s: "Love me less but for a long time"--this line is in the movie trailer and, without indicating to whom he says them, I don't think including it counts as "plot spoiling").
The movie is set in and presumably was shot in winter in Paris. It doesn't look that cold, but the skies are gray. The film is definitely not gray. The clothes are not even the French standard black, but include bursts of color.
The look, the attitudes, the cigarettes (though they have now been banned inside bars and restaurants)--the movie is very, very, very French. (No question about this being a French find for Barbara.) Commercial French, but those with an intolerance to French charms will definitely not like "Les chansons d'amour." Nor will anyone put off by sexual fluidity in general or Louis Garrel's unusual look.
(I will not attempt to enumerate the allusions to French New Wave movies that pop up in "Les chansons d'amour." Suffice is to say that the intertexualities are numerous, including a Ismaël in line for a screening of Christophe Honoré's previous film, "Après lui.")
Also see my reviews of the Resnais semi-musicals Life is a Bed of Roses and Private Fears in Public Places and of Honoré's Dans Paris.
The Red Envelope/IFC DVD (with no bonus features other than the already-mentioned trailer) was released 24 July. Netflix has it both online and by mail. It is not in theaters, but since when does that matter to epinions?
© 2008, Stephen O. Murray
Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Date Movie
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