Cast: Louis Garrel, Ludivine Sagnier, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet

Director: Christophe Honoré

Screenplay: Christophe Honoré

Running time: 1 hr 35 mins

Genre: French Film/Musical/Drama



CRITIQUE:

There’s a blinking charm in Christophe Honoré’s musical that’s hard to shrug off. With the leads’ appeal and the unashamedly quixotic songs, it’s almost sinful not to like it, at least. But with an uneven storyline and preposterous characters, we are mainly reminded that the French love being in love, with a substantially little emotional focus. A ménage-à-trois of all sorts, of all sexes, this is Honoré honouring a Truffaut-esque complexity of romance, tinge with grief and dark themes of death and depression. The main flaws of this film are the characters, who are humans which are difficult to psychologically pin down, and they are people whom we can’t emotionally invest in. The primary player in a love triangle, Ismaël (the reliable Louis Garrel) encounters a tragic loss of his girlfriend, becoming sorrow-stricken, breaks bonds with the second woman, and begins a love affair with a homosexual college student as his way of overcoming misery. We are also to be reminded that is a musical, people, so characters get to break out into a song (there are 13 of them). Whilst sensitive in its delivery of music, it’s an unpretentious modern musical that doesn’t stage or over-elaborate set pieces or sequences. The handheld look is natural and confident, and opts for a bleak, chilly atmosphere, rather than a shimmery-postcard-perfect Paris.


VERDICT:

A bleakly-themed, tune-coated French romance(s). Unassuming as a modern musical, uneven as a film.



RATING: B-