Les amours imaginaires

In the new film auteur sweetheart Xavier Dolan's sophomore effort we receive a stylish and vague story about a passion for love. A love shared by two friends Marie (Mona Chokri) and Francis (the all-star Xavier Dolan) towards a sumptuously corny blond-haired egotripping Adonis Nicolas (Niels Schneider) a.k.a. Nico. Set to some ear-tasty music fronted by a french Dalida sung version of "Bang Bang" we receive a story about the tensions, exasperations and unfulfilled promise of expectations. Intermingled occasionally by quasi-documentary tidbit lessons of love from random people strangely balancing on the edge of mockumentary territory.

All the above is set as a backdrop to a plethora of homages to french New Wave, Jim Jarmusch, Audrey Hepburn and... Wong Kar-Wai. Albeit the nods to Kar-Wai are more than slight, as to an extent it basically felt like Dolan was basically attempting a quasi-farcical remake of the Asian pivotal work "In the Mood for Love". All inclusive. Featuring slowed-down long trailing shots, coloured cinematography, brilliantly focused sensual scenes, retro music and even an extremely overdone love poem to cigarettes and smoke. After basically ripping off Christopher Doyle's cinematography Xavier Dolan pasted together a piece of post-post-modernism, but without any of the subtle magic, power and enticement of Kar-Wai's original. The additional issue lies with the overusing of slow shots coupled with barrages of music, that lack ingenuity or class, instead bring about a repetitiveness problem and most of time seem like a tasteless parody of Doyle. Not to be too hard on Doyle even Kar-Wai himself was unable to imprint his own style into a Western film ("The Blueberry Nights"), which seems increasingly to prove that his solutions are specifically best made in Asia. Nonetheless I would go as far as to say that Dolan intended such strong borrowing after noticing the strong story similarities, as both movies are not about love itself, but about the longing for love.

Leaving the issue of almost blatant plagiarism the movie does show a lot of promise on a purely plot level and to some extent this promise is fulfilled. After slowly plodding out the story itself it does manage to engage, even though neither Dolan or Chokri have the stage presence or impact to actually convey their emotion. Almost no tension is created between characters and I found most scenes lacking dramatically. The only actor who managed to deliver was Schneider, but his role was being an egocentric and slightly clueless love-boy, so as such he was a secondary character.

The movie faces additional issues with overly worked lines with pop-cultural reference and tough words, which intend to convey a feeling of intellectuality, but are essentially unable to gloss over the fact that this seems forcibly awkward bordering on banal. Additionally other dialogues lack focus or the initially interesting idea is overused to absurdity (especially regarding people losing their head and gibbering nonsense under high emotionality). Given the movie lasts over 100 minutes with ideas for about 30-35 minutes of intriguing plotting the rest is filled with slow-motion shots with music, some uninspiring chatter and some utterly pointless forgettable side events. Despite some admirable qualities "Les amours..." seems a bit childish plot-wise and before anyone can really take Dolan seriously he really seriously needs to... well... grow up...

To add to insult the interloping interviews, which occasionally cut into the main story, lack focus, are mostly tiresome and forcibly intellectual self-styled hipster sobbings. Save for one woman with glasses, which actually adds some interesting depth to the movie. Plus the ending three minutes or so of the movie are pointless, petty and basically are a result of the overzealous director wanting to inflict some badly focused revenge...

On the positive side the use of music is perfection, whilst the cinematography is spectacularly beautiful and drenched in colour. The movie was impressive on a script level to the extent that given a bit more experience and a touch of ingenuity Dolan can actually reach the stars and make a classic movie. But this attempt is just a far cry to divinity.

I am fully aware that this may be a minority opinion, but I can't gloss over the fact that watching this movie was tiresome, uneventful and had an overwhelming feeling of repetitiveness. To sum it up: Xavier Dolan is no Tony Leung, Mona Chokri is no Maggie Cheung and "Le amours imaginaires" will never be "In the Mood for Love".

I love the pace and styling of this modernisation (perhaps) of Jules et Jim. I love the hyper-sensed colouration and classy music-video slo- mo's, with the characters holding their lofty pretty heads even higher, set to a beautifully hip soundtrack.

Moni Chakri, the elegant brunette, who loves Audrey Hepburn is Dolan's character's best friend; hanging out and sharing moments, rather like Will and Grace. When cherubic, blonde curly haired Neils Schreider lands in their pretty laps, all sorts of questions about sexuality are thrown open and explored. It's all done with dignity and poise; no-one screams or hits anyone.

22 year old director Xavier Dolan, (who also stars) for this French- Canadian feature, has got his designer eyes set firmly on indulgence and unpretentious superficiality. Sexual rather than explicit, it is never rude and no one farts, pukes or is seen going to the toilet. These people are to be seen rather than to 'be'; their fairly shallow lives are ones filled with fairly petty annoyances, rather than life and death scenarios.

Sadly, the viewer doesn't really get to like them enough to care too much, though maybe surprisingly, they weren't as precocious or annoying as they could have been. I adopted an approach of just letting the rich visuals and sensual music flow gently over me, rather like chocolate sauce slowly rolling in folds down a steamed pudding.

Nothing knew is said either and perhaps this helps; anything jarring or monumentally profound would be just too much and spoil the pleasure. Not that it's quaint or twee, mind you but this is definitely bespoke designer fitted kitchen drama rather anything to do with an actual sink.

'Heartbeats' is a fun little film, a sort of Gallic rom-com, although don't expect the obligatory happy-ending where the two protagonists rejected in love hook up with each other. A simple story of unrequited love and ordinary obsessiveness, the film cuts to the chase in spite of its good looking characters and chic vibe: we're not all equally attractive, and we don't love another in equal amounts. The rejecter in this story doesn't even do anything particularly wrong, except treat others with a combination of openness and carelessness that is surely only natural when blessed with a certain type of good looks. The film's resolution of his hitherto ambiguous sexuality is clever, and the film as a whole is brilliantly orchestrated with a collection of popular songs, from different eras, each of which nonetheless is particularly chosen to fit a certain mood and to complement the images on screen at that time. Oddly, in spite of the emotional pain its characters are in, this film is a stylised paean to being young, beautiful and in love: the fact that it hurts only makes it sweeter.

Les Amours Imaginaires is potently beautiful purely based on its plot and the way the story is told. Its content is universal which allows anyone to relate to the story. It speaks about love, loss, rejection, and how love is all about our individual perceptive. This complex story breaks the stereotypes of sexual identity and shows that we cannot always chose who we fall in love with.

Dolans camera use and choice of colour is visually stimulating and beautiful to watch. He captures the beauty of Montreal and the culture that comes with it. The casting is incredible making the story very realistic.

What is even more important is that Les Amours Imaginaires is a story of young love told from the perceptive of a young man. We often see films about youth written or directed by film makers of a different time. This is a film that has a modern perceptive on the complexities of love.

If you have ever been in love, this film will be the speak to you like no other.

Young director Xavier Dolan's most recent feature was easily the find of the London Film Festival for me. Funnily enough I almost walked out, having come from an extremely dour realist movie (Mike Leigh's Another Year) and been presented with an extremely stylised and fairly ironic confection, and thus being quite dysphoric and skeptical. But it really blossomed out to superb effect. Some critical horses have baulked at the first fence though! The film concerns young love. The two leads of the story are both searching for perfect love and attempting to create the perfect personas to market themselves. Marie is just lovable, she creates this image where she dresses in vintage fifties clothes, with hair and makeup to match, sends letters in black envelopes addressed in gold glitter pen, she reads all the right stuff, including Quebecois poet Gaston Miron, to impress boys with her intellect. Her friend, rival and sometimes lover Francis (played by Xavier Dolan himself) is 5/6ths gay (by the Kinsey scale, which is mentioned in the film) and both are after the same man, Nicolas, who has blond curls and is straight out of an erotic dream of Cocteau (shots of Cocteau drawings are edited into the movie at one point).

Love here is all about style, our "heroes" turn up to only the most fabulous parties, where only exactly the right music plays, Moet flows generously and where only the beautiful people lounge. Have you money, looks, wit, are you fun, are you educated, these are the criteria for these young folk in their quest to get together. Although the alternate title to the film "Love, Imagined" is accurate in many respects, I think it underestimates the headiness and the glory of these admittedly judgemental and narcissistic love throes.

The soundtrack is mostly superb and will be finding its way to my MP3 player. One thing I would criticise though is the repeated use of Bach Cello Suites played over tepid love scenes, it just comes off as odd. Dalida's Italian language version of Bang Bang (... you shot me down) is also repeatedly played and works to much better effect. Favourite party music for me would be Exactement by Vive la Fête (lyrics repeat "Adorable Formidable").

I like the refreshing honesty with which people talk in the movie about love and rejection, one woman saying it takes her a year to get over, which sounds about right to me (coming up on 11 months myself, with the end in sight!).

Absolutely loved the ending when Nicolas walks up to Marie and Francis in the party, won't spoil it but I laughed a lot and had to suppress a whoop. Definitely a feel good movie despite subject matter that could be handled in a much more downbeat manner.