http://www.towleroad.com/2011/02/movies-heartbeats-oscar-weekend.html#commentsHeartbeats
By NATHANIEL ROGERS
@nathanielr
The Film Experience
02/24/2011 Xavier Dolan, an out gay quintuple threat:
writer/director/actor/producer/wunderkind."The only truth is love beyond reason" goes the quote from French poet
Alfred de Musset that opens
Xavier Dolan's moody dreamy French Canadian film
Heartbeats. That sounds beautiful in theory, sure, but living it is messier. Immediately the film cuts to a funny frank series of talking head interviews from people who have been unlucky in love. One woman compares herself to
Glenn Close in
Fatal Attraction and describes panicking at her computer, waiting for emails that never come. "If somebody died every time I hit refresh, there'd be nobody left alive."
Poetic idealized notions of love clashing with humiliating darkly comic reality? It's a pretty apt way to introduce and describe this arguably slight but beautiful film in which best friends
Marie (
Monia Chokri) and
Francis (Xavier Dolan) fall for angelic blond
Nico (
Niels Schneider) who they spot at a party. They feign disinterest for the other's benefit but they fall. Soon they're vying for his attention with gifts, sleepovers, and phonecalls. Is Nico interested in Marie or Francis? Both? Neither?
The casting works marvels: Dolan and Chokri, who are friends in real life, conjure deeply specific codependent-friends-who-irritate-each-other chemistry; Schneider plays Nico just blankly enough that it's easy to understand (or at least forgive) the mutual confusions. It's almost as if his golden curls absorb all fantasies and projections. To steal a phrase from
Mean Girls... 'That's why his hair is so big. It's full of secrets!'
Some of their fantasies are visualized. At one point while Francis is eating his feelings, he imagines Nico serene under a shower of marshmallows. Viewers may that Dolan tricks up his movie too much: there are fantasy segments, color coded sex scenes, and a fondness for slo-mo that might even embarrass
Wong Kar Wai. Even if Dolan's personal voice as a filmmaker is still forming (he's only 21) or a bit muffled by his inebriated declarations of love for the cinema, there's little doubt that he's gifted. One long slo-mo segment paired with the theatrically mournful pop classic "Bang Bang" features Marie and Francis over-primping, over-dressing, and tragically over-hoping for Nico's birthday party. Just as the slo-mo walking and fetishized color risks grating on your last nerve, Marie and Francis enter the party. Their song vanishes forced out by the party's own idea of a soundtrack: "Jump Around". This jarring transition from their drama queen headspace to the drunken messy reality of a party (delightfully bitchy) is both moving and funny if you're letting the movie's moods and observations about human behavior sink in. If you are, you can feign indifference all you want, but you'll fall. Bang Bang. The movie shoots you down.