(4/5)
Ever since Xavier Dolan’s debut film I Killed My Mother was my favorite of the AFI Fest last year, I’ve been eagerly anticipating his followup. And though Heartbeats (Les amours imaginaires, which is really a better title – translates to “Imaginary Loves”) is a very different film and perhaps doesn’t pack quite the emotional punch of Dolan’s previous film, it remained a wholly delightful experience and one that quite pleased me.
The ever-so-slight but charming story concerns friends Marie (Monie Chokri) and Francis (Xavier Dolan), who both become infatuated with Adonis-like Nicholas (Niels Schneider), but Nicholas is maddeningly ambiguous both with his sexuality in general and with his affections for these two specifically. Much of the movie is merely a succession of episodes as Marie and Francis try to subtly one-up each other and claim Nicholas for themselves as Nicholas glides blithely through their lives, unaware of the battle of the wills going on around him.
Nicholas basically acts as a cipher, a blankness for Marie and Francis to project their desires onto, an empty battlefield for them to wage their war of glances and gifts. There’s a lot of ultra-stylized bits in here, slow motion as they simultaneously prepare to meet Nicholas for a date on which he has invited them both, or as they contemplate his perceived perfection, much of it set to very stylized but appropriate music (“My Baby Shot Me Down” in French, for example). This style is likely to turn a lot of people off, and there’s certainly an argument to be made that the film values style over substance to its detriment, but I’m a self-admitted style whore, and I ate this stuff up.
Yet it’s not entirely without substance, and a lot of the substance is due to the winning and nuanced performances from all three leads, but especially Chokri and Dolan, who prove able to get across more with a raised eyebrow or drooping shoulder than many actors can in a page of dialogue. Just beneath the surface, it is about obsession and jealousy and friendship as well as about this specific, frustratingly superficial relationship. And by the end, there are a few scenes the belie the poppy simplicity of the earlier sections and are actually quite heartbreaking, at least if you’ve allowed yourself to invest in these characters at all.
And that may be the one weakness of the film; its dependence on style in the first half or three quarters may make it difficult for some to connect with these characters enough for these later scenes to have much impact. This was certainly not the case with I Killed My Mother, which was devastatingly raw in comparison with Heartbeats‘ polished Technicolor sheen. Yet, there are still many points of connection between the two – the artsy, dreamy sequences from I Killed My Mother could almost be the prototype for all of Heartbeats, and Dolan employs a similar technique of cutting to people on video talking about relationships, parallel in theme to the film though outside of its narrative – though here they are often laugh out loud funny, as opposed to deep angst of I Killed My Mother‘s video diaries.
Of course, it’s a little unfair to compare the first two films by a young director so stringently, and Heartbeats stands quite well on its own, or in comparison with other obvious precursors, like Jacques Demy and other New Wave directors. I was glad to see Dolan stretch in quite a different direction with Heartbeats yet still retain that sense of style and the subtle undercurrents of feeling that marked I Killed My Mother. It may not be as emotionally compelling as his previous film, but it nearly makes up for that with charm and beauty. I’m not ranking it the highest of everything I saw at AFI, but it’s likely the one I’d want to go back and rewatch the soonest.
