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France, United Kingdom, Czech Republic · 2011
2h 19m
Director Christophe Honoré
Starring Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Ludivine Sagnier, Louis Garrel
Genre Drama, Music, Romance
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From Paris to London, Madeleine and her daughter Véra flit from one amorous adventure to the next, living for the moment and taking all the opportunities that life offers. But not every love affair is without its consequences and disappointments. As time goes by and gnaws away at one’s deepest feelings, love becomes a harder game to play.
Honoré's combination of contemporary romantic hijinks and the stylization inherent in the musical genre aren't juxtaposed ironically: Beloved is a tenderly sincere musical that celebrates love even as it acknowledges the ways in which it can sometimes lead to tragedy.
Even with Gallic neomusical royalty like Catherine Deneuve joining in the fray, the whole endeavor reeks of the filmmaker throwing everything against the wall yet barely making anything stick.
Christophe Honoré goes epic in a tale of interlocking lives that owes a debt to Jacques Demy. It won't be to everyone's taste but it's playful enough to win us over.
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
Long before your 140 minutes are up, you may wish you went to see "Sparkle" instead.
Beloved never really earns its sprawling timeline, eventually getting bogged down with too many developments and overstaying its welcome. For a movie where people intermittently burst into song, the plot is oddly one-note.
Honoré's made better films, and he'll make better films again; the most damning thing you can say about this one isn't that it feels like Honore doing a third-rate imitation of Francois Ozon ("Potiche," "8 Women"), but rather that it often feels like Honoré doing a third-rate imitation of himself.
Slant Magazine by Jesse Cataldo
Ultimately crammed at a frustrating juncture between period-piece froth and seriously conceived drama, never tipping its hand toward either.
Village Voice by Melissa Anderson
A sprawling mess of multiple romantic triangles in which all the angles are obtuse.
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
The movie is at its lightest, most charming and most persuasive in the 60s; as it approaches the present, something inescapably preposterous weighs it down, though Honoré carries it off with some flair.
Alex Beaupain's songs effectively convey emotion, but Beloved doesn't scale the heights of the Truffaut and Demy films it pastiches.
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