For the beguiling and bittersweet “Love Songs,” French writer-director Christophe Honore has imaginatively strung together the plaintive music and lyrics of 13 Alex Beaupain tunes, some of them already around, others written specifically for the film. So well integrated are the songs, which enrich the story and its characters immeasurably, that dialogue flows into them with an easy naturalness.
An attractive and talented young cast brings this graceful film alive in all its tenderness and emotion.
Louis Garrel’s Ismael cuts a romantic figure, a tall, lean Parisian journalist with dark eyes and tousled dark hair. His lover, Julie (Ludivine Sagnier), agrees to a menage u trois with Ismael’s colleague, Alice (Clotilde Hesme), to please him, but the arrangement takes an unexpected swerve that propels him in new directions and provides him with new insights, some painful, into himself.
Ismael is nothing if not magnetic, even if he is often moody and melancholy. Julie’s family, most notably her beautiful sister, Jeanne (Chiara Mastroianni, who resembles her late father, Marcello, rather than her mother, Catherine Deneuve), is much taken with him, as is the brother (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet) of an ex-boyfriend of Alice, who also is captivated by Ismael.
Despite being surrounded by such loving concern, Ismael nevertheless experiences the loneliness of self-discovery. Mastroianni’s gravitas and insight as Jeanne anchor the film as Garrel’s shallow Ismael gradually moves toward a burgeoning maturity.
“Love Songs” will inevitably recall Jacques Demy’s classic 1964 “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” although in “Umbrellas” all the dialogue was sung as well as Michel Legrand’s memorable lyrics.
Whereas “Umbrellas” has become timeless in its depiction of romance, “Love Songs” strikes a strongly contemporary note in its calm acceptance of the fluidity of desire and emotion.
The Los Angeles Times does not give star ratings.
“Love Songs”
Not rated 1 hour, 35 minutes. Written and directed by Christophe Honore. Starring Louis Garrel, Ludivine Sagnier, Clotilde Hesme, Chiara Mastroianni and Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet. Opens today at Starz.
