Dans Paris , Christophe Honoré's bittersweet homage to the New Wave, made my top ten list of 2007. Now the novelist and director is back with another curious film that's part throwback to traditions and part pioneering break with them.
At first, Love Songs feels like an updated version of the Jacques Demy musicals that inspired it: Louis Garrel, Ludivine Sagnier, and Clotilde Hesme prance down boulevards and cuddle under the covers in a playful, singing ménage à trois that promises delicious complications. Contemporary French cinema doesn't get much more fun than Sagnier dancing around the Place de la Bastille in a white coat designed to call to mind the young Catherine Deneuve of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.
But Honoré's project is more ambitious than, say, Francois Ozon's candy-colored confection 8 Women or Alain Resnais' Not On The Lips. Love Songs isn't an ironic revisiting of the genre but a serious attempt to push it into new territory. After a shocking second-act turn of events, the mood becomes more somber as Garrel, Chiara Mastroianni, and Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet attempt to tackle their pain and grief through song -- and that's not the last of Love Songs'many aesthetic and emotional surprises.
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Love Songs (2008), an IFC Films and Red Envelope Entertainment release, opens Friday, March 21 at the Paris Theatre and IFC Center, and will also be available simultaneously on demand, with a national roll-out to follow.
