Les chansons d'amour

I've been a fan of Louis Garrel ("The Dreamers") and Ludivine Sagnier ("Swimming Pool") for a few years now, so when I heard they were starring in a romance musical, I was really excited. "Les Chansons d'Amour" aka "Love Songs" met, actually exceeded, my expectations. The film is a gorgeous, sometimes poignant and subtly funny look at love and (straight, bisexual, homosexual) relationships in contemporary Paris. Its adorably improvised musical sequences, the beauty of the music and locations, the chemistry of the ensemble cast (Chiara Mastroianni, who looks a lot like her father, the late Marcello Mastroianni, delivers a captivating performance as Sagnier's sister), all add up to the enchanting final result. This is the third film director Christophe Honoré makes with Louis Garrel (after 'Ma Mère' and 'Dans Paris'), and they announced a sequel for 2011. I will definitely check it, but it will be hard to top "Love Songs", since it ended perfectly in my eyes. Whether the sequel will disappoint or not is another story; for now, just enjoy the real gem that these chansons are... "love me less, but love me a long time". 10/10.

In my part of the USA, it is rare to come across a film like this. It makes no attempt to compromise its Parisian point of view for American audiences. This film allows an American audience the chance to get a glimpse from the perspective of the contemporary French young adult. There are plenty of French geographic and political reference to confuse, but they, like the Parisian scenes, just give the film its identity.

Others have provided detailed synopses of the story. I would rather you just take it as it comes and enjoy how different the plot development is. As a matter of fact, watch this film and try to appreciate how different it is from the ordinary American fare…no simple boy meets girl romance here. These beautiful people aren't young, chic urbanites wearing designer clothes they can't afford, living in apartments featured in Architectural Digest. We have three young women (Ludivine Sagnier, Clotilde Hesme, and Chiara Mastroianni) who lack the assistance of a personal shopper or a Beverly Hills stylist, but do not lack beauty or sensuality. Also, as a 59 year old man, I have to mention Brigitte Roüan, who shows how attractive a French grandmother can be. The men are similarly attractive. Louis Garrel demonstrates why he is currently the hottest actor in France. Newcomer Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet is disarmingly charming.

But this is a musical. You will find no potential American Idols here. The actors are not going to dazzle you with vocal gymnastics. The numbers have no clever arrangements or over produced orchestration. You have evocative lyrics set to a score reminiscent of US folk music in the 1960s or more exactly, French coffee houses. One word of caution, the English subtitles are quite misleading at times. My college French is a little rusty, but a review of the French subtitles gave me an appreciation of how descriptive the lyrics are.

Finally, there is no gratuitous violence or nudity, but look for the number Ma Memoire Sale (My Soiled Memory), where Ismael begs to be cleansed of the painful memory of his lost love. Some may be shocked at the scene, but you can't deny the passion and pain that permeates the number.

I have downloaded the soundtrack and ordered the DVD for this is like a good French dish, an experience to linger over.

How to put into words a film with this sensorial density? It's clearly not the simplest task. "Congratulations Christophe Honoré" could be a good approach, maybe the best.

As a Portuguese, a traditional nation in the "European standards", I may say that this film surpasses my bounds when speaking of, let's say, "relational experimentalism". Even so, I found it astoundingly beautiful and I guess that picking-up the gay issue would be to diminish a film about life and what we make of it in our nowadays living.

To have lived in France for over a year, eventually helped me out to remark some interesting French particularities in the characters.

I found the humor in this film to be typically French. There's a scene were Ismael is Wrapping a pillow making a baby of it, asking everybody in the room to remain silent not to wake up the child that had just gotten asleep. Then, unexpectedly, he throws the "baby" right out of the window as he gets tired of the staging. This kind of uncompromising performances, risking the ridiculous, were undoubtedly a "déjà vu" for me.

The music is also a key element in the film and gives it a Parisian melancholical aura. The music is often used by 2 or more characters in the form of a dialog where they show their feelings and points of view. As they sing, the scenes are incredible well filmed either outdoor, in the endless avenues of Paris, or indoor in the cosiness of a warm bed in a cold winter night. Sometimes I felt as I was one of the characters right in the scene.

The anguish, the indecision and above all, the solitude are the marking subjects in a film that exposes in a crude manner how individualistic the society is becoming in France, and why not, in Europe.

It's a contemporary (timeless?) film about human relationships. In my opinion, the antithesis of the blockbuster cinema: The extravagance is replaced by beauty, the free nudity is replaced by sensuality and the easy laugh is avoided. The dialogs are intelligent, complex and they have ambiguous interpretation.

At the end of the movie, a phrase synthesizes it all: "Love me less but for a long time".

To assume the compromise revoking the emotional hurricane brought by fleeting relations will bring peace, at last.

Just out of the theatre, I would like to share my impressions about "Les Chansons d'Amour".

This movie is a rare jewel which is even more precious as France is changing so quickly at the moment. It reminds us that, at the end of the day, we are the only ones able to chose our own lives if not death. Actors and actresses are just perfect. Brigitte Rouan and Chiara Mastroiani in particular make you believe in a very vivid way that this French family exists somewhere.

I don't want to say anything about the storyline which is so moving. I began to cry at the first picture in black and white which... but I'd better stop right here.

I'm glad I bought the cd, I'm going to listen to it all evening.

I am so happy that such a movie exists.

Thank you (again) Christophe Honoré.

Paris, romance, love songs, and maybe a little Pedro Almodovar mixed in.

Love Songs is just that - fourteen love songs, all very beautiful, probably available on You Tube, tied together with some dialog.

I'm not impressed with Louis Garrel, but maybe I am not supposed to be.

It is Ludivine Sagnier (Paris, je t'aime, Swimming Pool, 8 femmes) that sets my heart a flutter, whether she is singing or discussing the intricacies of three-way sex with her mum. No, there is no sex in the film, it's a romance.

Clotilde Hesme is the third member of the menage a trois.

Part 1 ended in a manner that I did not expect in a romantic film.

Everything changed after the tragedy and a sadness came over the film as people struggled to find love and deal with loss.

It was all about the music, however, and, in that sense, it was a good film.