User Reviews

'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.

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.

I agree with another reviewer that love is not the real subject of the film. The characters think they're feeling love, and they're certainly looking for love, but in such a shallow and conniving way they're incapable of getting beyond mere sensuality at best. This is a film which starts out superficially, as superficial as its characters. Their lack of depth is underlined by the interviews of more interesting people that we would almost rather be following, but we're stuck with this trio of narcissists trying to impress each other through attitude, clothes, and money-- each locked within his competitive self and each masturbating in his or her own way. The director's own vanity fits in perfectly with his fetishist approach, the Wong Kar Wai-like sensual slow-motion to heighten gesture and make us take a long hard look at these high-strung game players.

The viewer must be patient and wait for the second part when the film, in dealing with the repercussions from the narcissism of the first part, takes on depth. It is during the last twenty minutes that the actor/director succeeds in dealing with real emotions, not the imitation ones of the first half. Now a new tension sets in that builds to its vociferous climax where the actors are required to go beyond what they have demonstrated up to this point. Watching these neurotic Montréalians (when they finally grow up, they can be the manic-depressive characters in a Denys Arcand film), the viewer goes through the gamut of his or her own memories of attraction and rejection, bouncing around like the ping-pong balls that the expressive actors represent in their own attraction/flirtation/appeasement fluctuations. In fact, the more the film is watched with introspection, the more relevant it becomes.

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".

This is a great little film but you have to be a little patient. The writer/director and star, Xavier Dolan, has done a masterful job in telling a simple story in a very interesting way. The writing is restrained and a study in the economy of words. I loved it. Dolan's directing is seasoned and insightful. He stages his scenes with lots of color and creative camera angles to amazing effect whether it's the color of an umbrella on a rainy day, a dress, or common inventory on a store shelf. It is visually stunning and stylish. Between Dolan and the other two leads played by Monia Chokri and Niels Schneider, you have a powerfully subtle ensemble. I wasn't so sure about Schneider until near the end when I realized how aloof his "NIko" had to be in order for the film to work at the end. He looks like he stepped off of a Greek coin, and at first you get the impression he's just there to look pretty. Not so. Dolan and Chokri give outstanding performances as best friends, who are not exactly single, but eschew the real people in their lives for the imaginary one they dream to snag. This is not a movie to be over analyzed. Just watch it and enjoy. There's a false ending that is adorable. The real ending, about five minutes later, just made me laugh out loud. If you like good films and enjoy watching boundless creativity on display, watch this one. It might be criticized by some for being "slow". It's not. It real.

The thing is this, despite having a relatively short screen time, the film still manages to feel like it's spinning in the same wheels for most of its runtime. The actors are fine (although Dolan's starting to show his limitations as an actor and perhaps he should cast others, something that he wisely did for Mommy). The film seems to feel like it's mostly just style and no real substance. There could've been a rather normal love triangle film in here somewhere, and yet Dolan doesn't even really want to do that. I'm not even sure what he really wanted to do, either way. Easily his weakest film and not one I'd recommend. There's simply nothing original here to recommend, certainly not in terms of theme.

As the second feature from the promising young Canadian director-writer-actor Xavier Dolan, after his remarkable debut I KILLED MY MOTHER (2009), in order not to be a flash in the pan, Dolan chooses to narrow his objects into an illusionary love triangle which concentrates a gay boy and his best girlfriend both fall for a blonde boy (doesn't sound like a triangle, yup!). My personal feeling is that while the story loses its complexity, the film itself also is shoehorned with stylistic slow motions and jumping close-ups of the camera, which are way too replete.

Also the over-abuse of Bach's music, Dalida's interpretation of the Italian version of Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down) and bold imitations of Andy Warhol all make the film unique in a negative way, commonly I cannot resist the wallop from accumulation of different colorful palette, but in this case, it just doesn't work for me, the alternate interviews doesn't help at all (maybe all because it is French).

The cast is OK, slightly annoying I must say, especially Monia and Niels, very difficult to be likesome, maybe Dolan did it willfully.

The film is much more experimental than Dolan's debut film, it seems that he try to challenge his audience's tolerance, as for me, I feel a bit disappointed, but I still hold expectations for his next work as we know, youth is one's most precious capital, hope he will take good advantage of it and reach the true auteurism. I sincerely hope it will not be my wishful thinking.

21-year-old Xavier Dolan is fast becoming the star of Canadian cinema. The Quebec prodigy stormed on to the international scene with his debut J'ai tué ma mere (I killed My Mother) winning three awards at Cannes last year.

His follow-up is Les Amours Imaginaires (Heartbeats in English) and centres on a three-way love triangle. Dolan himself plays Francis, a gay Montrealer who becomes infatuated with a young socialite named Nicolas, played by Niels Schneider. Instantaneously, Francis' close friend Marie, played by Monia Chokri develops feelings of her own for Nicolas.

As the tumultuousness of love for Nicolas deepens for the two of them their close friendship begins to suffer. The two friends become embroiled in a struggle to please Nicolas who appears to represent Dolan's own ideal.

The theme of idealization is explored notably in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo and Thomas Mann's Death in Venice which was made into a film by Luchino Visconti. There is a scene at a party where Marie envisions Michalangelo's David, the artist' own physical ideal when staring admirably at Nicolas.

Romantic obsession begins to take hold of the two friends as they vie for the affection of someone who will never return their love. Like in I killed My Mother, his follow up is about Dolan's struggling with his own homosexuality. The film is also a meditation on the senselessness of love and why its own madness is what makes it so appealing.

Dolan is undoubtedly a big talent. Monia Chokri who plays the muse of the film shines the brightest in front of the camera. Her archaic hairstyle and fashion sense would remind anyone familiar with French actress Anna Karina. And that provides a clue in who Dolan draws his cinematic inspiration from.

Three-way conflicts were a hallmark of Jean-Luc Godard and other new wave directors like Francois Truffaut. Dolan may have drawn his inspiration from Truffaut's own Jules and Jim. But Les Amours Imaginaires has many more references to Godard's early work.

Everything down to the scene settings, cultural references and camera shots are deliberately taken from Godard's early classics such as Breathless and Band of Outsiders. The characters too represent the remnants of the 1960s-style cultural rebellion that Godard's films often explored which still thrives in Montreal today.

One final stylistic note, the film also includes a roundtable of characters not related to the main story discussing relationships. Dolan manages to make it relevant to the story and continues the tradition set by Godard in Masculine Feminine. The third sequence however does run a bit too long.

Les Amours Imaginaires is already out on DVD in Canada. It will be released in theatres in the United States on February 1, 2011 so look out for it.

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.

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.

This new lavish love story by Xavier Dolan is a movie i've been looking forward to for some time now, mostly because I love I Killed My Mother.

I could label it as hyper-stylized, but it was one of the most marvellously shot films and one film that I will certainly not forget. Heartbeats (USA title) is an original piece of cinema that I'm utterly in love with.

Heartbeats shows us a rather unique love story about two friends, a guy (Xavier Dolan) and a girl (Monia Chokri), who both fall in love with the same guy, both attempting to woo him, but to almost no avail.

I'm in love with this film as much as one can possible be, simply because I love Xavier's style and use of music (Dalida's "Bang, Bang" is amazing) as well as his very modern characters and the superb actors who incarnate them. It's essentially a fairly simple and amusing love story wrapped in a much more visually stimulating package and it is entertaining to watch Criticsism: The main problem is that the story doesn't have much depth and it doesn't really break norm. Dolan uses slow-motion and powerful songs (again "Bang, Bang" to extended scenes and moments, but it causes the story drag on a bit more than it should.

A film using memories and the gestures of characters and working in skin of delicate memories. About love, loss, friendship, need of the other , crumbs of New Wave , Antinous and self definition from the pieces of past. A beautiful cinematography. And the familiar universe of Xavier Dolan. Short, a sensitive, charming, seductive film, about nuances of feelings, expectations and choices of the other, about refuges. The film is almost a revelation for atmosphere. For precise delicacy and admirable elegance. And for the manner to use the experiences of viewer as basic piece of film seduction source.

Nothing new transpires here, a boy and girl fall for the same boy who's new in town, a vacant hunk exuding aftershave ad sex. I question why either of these two very spirited beings would waste their time so, but the film isn't made from a point in life where choices have cosmic import, it still has time and youth to spare, wounds to receive, a blank first page to be written on.

The filmmaker was barely 20 years old when he made this. What shall we say to him, why don't you have the soul of a 50 year old? It's enough that he is creative, more so than most of us at that point. He's the main actor, writer, and, it seems, the fashion eye behind the whole thing, the one who would have the sense to put his leading girl in the vintage dress, himself in the fiery red jacket.

The film is empty, in the sense French New Wave is, which this derives inspiration from. It offers the amalgamation of moments, breaking up story to re-arrange fragments of it in a room that characters walk through. A lot of it is simply stylized, more directly via Wong Kar Wai; languid smoke, slow motion walking in the rain, pensive touch. A lot is simply a matter of having the fashion sense to coordinate colors and bodies of image, music video inspired.

It does reach me a bit vacant. But that's all part of the life lived up to that point, not omission by ignorance. I'll have this than attempts at forced professionalism in the hopes of landing a Hollywood gig. It's vacancy in the sense of a capacity to be filled by all the stuff that come with baring soul.

Who knows, in time he may grow out of dressing the seduction, or not. But you'll see here someone who has a natural fondness for people, how faces can give away a hint of inmost troubles, reluctance, awkwardness, glimmers of yearning. It shows an interested human being who wants to find that elusive life no words ever do justice, only breath.

The most fundamental tool in creative life (and any life that wants to perceive clearly, be alert to its surroundings) is a love for observing. This seems much harder to learn than all the other things. He has this and I'm happy to make the acquaintance.

What an awful film! The worst I have seen in many moons. It's not worth writing any details about this trash. Xavier Dolan fancies himself as a filmmaker? Ha, ha! The guy bites his fingernails! Did anyone else notice that in the close-ups?

The story itself was not bad and could have been told in a much more interesting way. The testimonies about relationships we hear from people who have nothing to do with the main characters, are tossed at us in between scenes and only distract and do not enhance the film.

Les amours imaginaires? I imagine Dolan doesn't know much about l'amour...

Which persons are the most evil? High on that list are those who force others to fall in love with them; just for fun, just for the game.

We meet two friends here. The boy is gay and the girl is straight and they are very close. Then, this wonderboy arrives and they both fall in love. It's not just any crush, it's probably the love of their lives. But wonderboy manipulates and drives them to become enemies to the level of physical violence. Just for fun.

It sounds like a big tragedy, but anyway you never have that feeling. The couple is people of the world and you're never really worried. The touch is somewhat too light here.

Lucyrybicka's review was excellent and said it all. Unfortunately, my laptop's touchpad is very sensitive, and it made me accidentally click "No" to the question whether Lucyrybicka's review was helpful to me or not - as I was trying to move the pointer across from screen right to the "Yes" button. So it should say 5 out 8 there, not 4 out of 8. Sorry about that.

I loved this film and it has both great scenes and a very tasteful use of soundtrack. I saw it on the last day of the NIFF (Norwegian International Film Festival) in a very state-of-the-art auditorium, meaning big screen, digital image, superb sound - and it was a delight to watch A real treat.

I agree: If you've ever been in love (experienced limerence), this movie will speak to you like almost no other.

Having a threesome often means dealing with very difficult personal issues. If you don't succeed, then this strange relationship is doomed to fail. When Francis and Marie meet Nicolas, a young, blonde, rich and highly intelligent boy, their lives change. Although at first they try to deny it, they fall deeply in love with Nicolas.

Nothing can guarantee a healthy relationship, but here the protagonists embark upon an almost impossible journey. Nicolas acts like an unprejudiced and very liberal young man who doesn't care about Francis' homosexuality or Marie's uptightness. As they become friends, Nicolas transforms himself into the object of desire of both Francis and Marie.

Nonetheless, nothing seems to indicate that Nicolas has feelings towards Francis, after all they have only shared a handful of meaningless –although rather intimate- moments: Nicolas had been roughhousing with Francis in the woods, and also, after sleeping together, Francis had noticed Nicolas' leg rubbing against his own. These are just minuscule details but Francis starts to get obsessed about his young friend. At the same time, Marie convinces herself that Nicolas is the love of her life; she is now worried about Francis advances, and because of that their friendship might come to an end.

Nicolas is very handsome and exudes a sex appeal unlike any other youngster, and it's because of that that he turns into a symbolic phallus, ascribing to the genitality that condenses the nature of the object of desire. To explain this situation better, let's remember that Marie keeps dating other men but she finds these dates dull and completely forgettable. Francis does the same, but as he has casual sex with other guys, he realizes that none of them can be compared to Nicolas. Erotic objects, for man, are frequently aberrant, multiple and interchangeable. This is why Francis can still have sexual intercourse with multiple partners, who have no real defining features, they are, after all, interchangeable and, ultimately, aberrant. Under these circumstances, Francis' pain and suffering can only be subsidized by the tacit competition he maintains with his friend Marie. Jacques Lacan said once that no object of need and/or demand will ever satisfy the desire/subject. This is why Nicolas inserts himself in the realm of the phantasm; id est, he's an idealized figure that can never defy reality nor exist in the real.

The more time Francis and Marie spend with Nicolas, the more elusive and ungraspable he becomes. As they get closer to him, a barrier, a distance, is made evident. When the objects of need are metabolized ('eroticized') into signifiers of desire by virtue of the demand, it's rather obvious that any object will do as "object" of desire, since none will do. When Francis is alone in Nicolas's bedroom and starts smelling his pants and shirts, he cannot stop masturbating, evoking not the real boy but his traits, his invisible presence that has no place in the realm of the real. Nicolas, after all, is the object a, the object of desire, and since he is the target of men and women's libido he's also, in general terms, a nonexistent character.

This doesn't mean, however, that Nicolas' presence or absence doesn't have a profound effect in the lives of Francis and Marie. Director Xavier Dolan creates a fascinating group of characters and a really complex, intense and innovative story. Xavier Dolan is not only a magnificent writer and filmmaker, he's also a wonderful actor (he plays Francis, although he also had a part in another gay-themed production: Miroirs d'été, which I reviewed a few months ago). Niels Schneider gives an astounding performance as Nicolas, and so does Monia Chokri. Not only is the acting great, but the cinematography in general and the soundtrack of this film are truly unforgettable. In the end, as Lacan explains to us, the object of desire is bound to impossibility… and that's what the protagonists learn the hard way. Poignant, sad and powerful, Dolan's film is a masterwork.

Too often, crucial nuance is lost in translation for English-speaking audiences, and 21-year old French-Canadian Xavier Dolan's second film as writer/director/star/costume designer (all right, we get it ) is a perfect example. While its English title, Heartbeats, is appropriately poetic and fluttery, its original French title, Les Amours Imaginaires, ("The Imaginary Loves"), is so on-point it verges on a spoiler warning. But what isn't lost in translation is Dolan's keen, immaculate talent, and his rare foray into comparative levity - "romantic comedy" by way of cattiness and heartbreak - may be frothier than his average fare, but it's infectiously watchable, and wickedly amusing.

Dolan is clearly enamoured with early François Truffaut: his debut, I Killed My Mother, is a direct shout out to The 400 Blows, while Heartbeats is unapologetically a functional remake of Jules & Jim's steadily imploding friendship-turned-love-triangle. There's a deliberateness to this comparison, however, as Dolan employs this juxtaposition between the Bohemian-chic of WWI- era France and 21st century Montreal hipster culture to tease out the timelessness of love, lust, and folly in ambiguously intimate friendships. The ensuing proceedings are as delightfully droll as you'd expect, as Dolan deftly dances back and forth between his two lust-struck protagonists, forcing viewers to continuously reconsider their sympathies and allegiances as each sequence is filtered through their alternating points of view. The film feels almost tangibly laden with sexual tension, but Dolan continually, increasingly challenges us: is this the case, or is it a case of our protagonists (or we, the viewers) misguidedly supplying it?

Thankfully, Dolan proceeds through this murder mystery of flirtation with a teasing playfulness. His outlandishly hip stylistics - scenes lit in bold, single-colour pastel lighting; snarky, Wong-Kar Wai style slow-mo walking sequences coupled with a cover of Nancy Sinatra's "Bang Bang, My Baby Shot Me Down" as leitmotif (though a cameo of House of Pain's "Jump Around" is more fun); at one point a character is even showered in slow-motion falling marshmallows - set the tone perfectly: suave, artsy, and only retroactively coded as self-reflexively tongue-in-cheek. For those who didn't wear their $455 tangerine cashmere sweaters to the screening, the film may skirt the line of becoming too insufferably hipster to bear (a poem penned on a typewriter mailed in a black envelope with a wax seal? Please ) if satire - occasionally excruciatingly awkwardly so - isn't your strong suit. It isn't helped by a second act lag, as the initial smiles prompted by the characters' brewing hysterics fade somewhat. But have patience: confident as they may seem, the proceedings and characters are meant to play as human, but still ridiculous, and we're given sneaky reminders along the way to tide us by. Finally, just when we feel like our sympathies, such as they are, have finally settled by the film's climax, Dolan, with another neat, hilarious reversal, turns the tables, and ties it all together with a Forever 21 bow, complete with a sublime 'anti-moral' that brings cringes and laughs in equal measures.

Dolan's mediation of himself as star is droll in itself – amusingly, he initially makes no pretence at unbiased treatment of which 'team' viewers are invited to cheer for, though ripples invite sympathy or scorn for all parties involved through. Regardless, Dolan's acting proves just as committed as his directorial work – passionately emotive, with a bold anti-charisma alternatively sweet and pathetic, and replete with the subtlest tics to convey volumes of awkwardness or loneliness. Monia Chokri is somewhat less accessible, but still gives a boldly cold, clipped performance, her reserve and stylishly antiquated wardrobe serving as protective armour, fiercely conveying her longing in a deeply rooted, if not always wholly sympathetic, fashion. Finally, as the object of their affections, Niels Schneider pitches his cheeky, ambiguously alluring charm exactly right, and managing to convey a surprising amount of paradoxical sentiments with one cryptic phrase: "Love me or leave me."

To ride out a metaphor Dolan would doubtlessly detest, Heartbeats is a macaron of a movie: colourful, sweet, chic, and deceptively dense, but a fleeting, albeit delicious, trifle. It's lots of fun, immaculately constructed, and containing plenty of hearty character beats, but its deliberately shallow plot doesn't keep up with its stylizations enough for it to linger as much as some of Dolan's meatier, more serious work. Still, 'fun' is a crucially rare word in most critically regarded Canadian cinema, so, for this alone, Heartbeats is a worthwhile and highly enjoyable outing by one of the most promising contemporary voices in the industry. If this is Dolan's indictment on contemporary youth culture, I'd be terrified to see his take on senior citizenhood, a-la Amour

-8/10

"Les amours imaginaires" ("Heartbeats" in English) might remind one of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" in its depiction of a three-way relationship, including between two men. But it does have its own qualities. Slow-paced without being bland, it reminded me of Pedro Almodovar's movies, and subtly gives us a perceptive look at Audrey Hepburn's legacy.

I doubt that Hollywood's franchise-crazy studios would be willing to fund this sort of movie: too low-key and too intellectual. I recommend it, though. Everything about it is well done. I especially liked the complexity that they gave the characters. It's the sort of movie that would have to come from either Canada or Europe.

Definitely see it.