Last year, 20-year-old Xavier Dolan wowed Cannes with his debut “I Killed My Mother,” which won a ridiculous amount of awards including three from Cannes (C.I.C.A.E. award, Prix Regards Jeune, and SACD Prize).
Raw and emotional, the picture dealt with the conflicting love/hate ambivalence we feel towards family, and while the plot was simple it arrived with a keen visual style that dazzled many critics. His sophomore film “Heartbeats” arrived this year at Cannes, which has been compared favorably — at least early on — to Francois Truffaut’s classic “Jules and Jim” mixed in with some Wong Kar-Wai and frankly was one of our most anticipated films at the festival this year. (we unfortunately missed it).
But most critics seem to be rather cool on the film that stars Dolan himself along with Niels Schneider and Monia Chokri in a crazy love triangle centering on Schneider’s character Nicolas. The film reportedly received a standing ovation after its screening, but the reviews seem to be quite a mixed bag which disappoints us to no end.
Indiewire’s Eric Kohn felt the film was rather empty, saying ” “Heartbeats” lacks both credibility and a solid reason to exist. The end product is aimless love from start to finish.”Screendaily writer Mike Goodridge gives him props due to his age: “Alternately infuriating and delicious. While Dolan’s visual tricksiness and mannerisms wear on the patience, he does achieve occasional moments of visual poetry and, appropriately bearing in mind his age, captures the despair and longing of young heartache.”
Rob Nelson from Variety likens it to candy: “A classic example of style over substance… does prove an alluring companion for most of its running time. Splashy colors, oddball framing, super-cool threads and cranked-up retro music supply the pic’s bizarre love triangle with a dance-club atmosphere that’ll seduce young auds of most any orientation.”
Ben Kenigsberg from Time Out: “Shows a slight case of sophomore jinx. It’s full of precocity but a little aimless.”The AV Club’s Mike D’Angelo enjoys the film and takes another swipe at “Aurora”: ” In the end, Heartbeats… feels a bit too thin and derivative for its own good, but it’s still hugely refreshing, given the insane degree to which art cinema is now ruled by what one might call The New Austerity (Aurora).”Peter Howell of The Star is in love: “Dolan pulls off a nifty balancing act with Les amours imaginaires, which could easily have come off as a pretentious homage to such love-fixation classics as Truffaut’s Jules et Jim and Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love. The past influences are clearly there, but Dolan makes his film his own with a lightness of touch that keeps the emotional turmoil from straying too far into despair. He and his equally talented co-stars are faster to smile than they are to pout.”Alex Billington of FirstShowing states “It was one of the most beautifully shot films at Cannes this year and one film that I will definitely not be forgetting anytime soon. Its a uniquely modern bit of cinema that I’m absolutely in love with.”
