That Honoré knows a lot about movies is beyond question--but from first frame to last, Love Songs stays as icy to the touch as Julie's premature corpse.
Love Songs(Les chansons d'amour)
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
France · 2007
1h 40m
Director Christophe Honoré
Starring Louis Garrel, Ludivine Sagnier, Chiara Mastroianni, Clotilde Hesme
Genre Drama, Romance
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Ismael and Julie, in hopes of sparking their stalled relationship, enter an emotionally laced threesome with Alice. When tragedy strikes, they are forced to deal with the fragility of life and love. For Ismael, this means negotiating the advances of Julie's sister and a young college student — one of which may offer him redemption.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The New York Times by A.O. Scott
The girl-boy-girl threesome, which turns out to be short-lived, is perhaps the most straightforward emotional configuration in this odd, witty, touching film.
You could describe Love Songs, as a blend of François Truffaut's wistful Parisian sentimentalism and Pedro Almodóvar's acrid polysexual comedy, which were never far apart to begin with (given the difference in climate and native temperament between France and Spain).
New York Magazine (Vulture) by David Edelstein
Honoré has proven you can make a movie musical in which style doesn’t upstage content--a movie musical that blossoms from the inside out.
New York Daily News by Elizabeth Weitzman
So French you may have to buy your ticket in euros, Christophe Honoré's musical trifle feels ready-made for emotionally woozy undergraduates.
The result is a bittersweet trifle one can conceivably fall in love with, and Honore's best film so far.
Entertainment Weekly by Lisa Schwarzbaum
Chiara Mastroianni charms here just as her maman, Catherine Deneuve, did in Demy's 1964 classic.
Love Songs is definitely daring, but too much of it seems calculated to lead up to a final line about how to guard against grief.
Chiara Mastroianni, whose mom, Catherine Deneuve, starred in Demy's "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" (1964), appears here as Julie's sister. Vive la New Wave.
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