By Haile Lidow
Staff Writer
Xavier Dolan’s “Heartbeats” (“Les Amours Imaginaires”) focuses on style over substance. This results in both exquisitely beautiful cinematography and, unfortunately, a contrived script with uninteresting characters.
Dolan wrote, edited, directed and starred in the French-Canadian film, playing Francis, a young, well-dressed, gay hipster living in Quebec. He and his good friend, Marie (Monia Chokri), both fall head over heels in love with Nicolas (Niels Schneider), a blonde, curly-haired foreigner that just moved into town and who is compared to Michelangelo’s David.
The two become close friends with Nicolas, having platonic sleepovers, frequenting parties and even taking a trip into the country together. However, Nic’s preference of the two remains undetectable, and his sexual orientation is only made more confusing when he declares Audrey Hepburn as the love of his life.
The competition between Francis and Marie develops as they fall harder and harder for Nicolas. They begin to make snide comments to each other, which culminates in a flailing slap-fight amongst fallen autumn leaves which, though beautiful, is not very powerful.
By far the most redeeming quality of the film is its cinematography and brilliant artistic portrayal of the hipster culture obsession that has risen in current urban 18 to 24 year olds.
The clothes worn in the film are creative and risk-taking, resulting in an interesting combination of retro and contemporary style with bright colors that complement the Canadian backdrop. Dolan’s general command of the camera makes every frame of the film a piece of artwork.
But aside from the innovative visual aspects of “Heartbeats,” the subtitled film fell flat in its lack of interesting dialogue and the annoying actions of the charactors.
All three of the main actors seem childish in their speech and immature in their approach to the romantic (or lack thereof) situation, even though they are portrayed as chain-smoking, partying young adults in an independent environment.
Though it may be realistic in its uneventful, anticlimactic portrayal of unrequited love, the plot comes off as forced and the film is quite boring despite its relatively short timespan of about 90 minutes.
However, for those who are purely interested in cinematography and visual artwork, “Heartbeats” is certainly worthwhile. Dolan’s film is currently playing at the Laemmle’s Sunset 5 indie theater in Los Angeles.
This is a very solid review.