Heartbeats

Cannes (Un Certain Regard) - With new movies from the veteran likes of Tavernier, Godard and Woody Allen featured in the line-up, Cannes 2010 has proved exceptionally accommodating to the grey-hairs. Even greater reason then for Paul Martin to cherish the second film from 21-year-old Xavier Dolan, a tale of youthful tumult recounted with the assured touch of an old hand.

To be honest, when I was 21 I was incapable of ironing a shirt without making an international incident out of it, so for Canadian director Xavier Dolan to be serving up movie number two at such a tender age is really rather remarkable (his first, I Killed My Mother, went down great guns in Director's Fortnight at last year's Cannes). And not only is Dolan wielding the megaphone on Heartbeats - an English title infinitely less sexy than its French original, Les Amours Imaginaires - he also writes and stars, as well as taking a hand in the art design, costuming and editing. Quite frankly if he was any more of a wunderkind he would have to be prevented from working, just so as to prevent the rest of the populace from becoming suicidally depressed about their own comparatively meagre achievements.

Dolan casts himself as Frank, handsome high-haired Montreal hipster and gay best friend of Marie (Monia Chokri), an unashamedly intellectual young woman, always immaculately turned out in retro-cool vintage outfits. At the outset of the film the duo make the acquaintance of Nicolas (Niels Schneider), a shaggy-haired, beguilingly charming country boy, freshly arrived in the big city. Sporting a perpetually laid-back demeanour and blessed with wide-eyed charisma, Nico exerts a powerful effect on the two friends, each soon vying to spend as much time as possible in the newcomer's company. This attraction felt by Frank and Marie for Nico becomes increasingly powerful and amatory, and they compete with one another for his attention, all the while scouring his actions for the signals that might inform them who he likes best, and indeed in which direction he is sexually inclined.

Heartbeats is simultaneously a very simple tale and an intricate, deeply layered one. Simple in terms of its actual events, the story often playing as straightforward farce, comic tension simmering between Frank and Marie with escalating heat. If that makes it sound worringly akin to some multiplex frenemies garbage like Bride Wars then let me assuage any such fears right here and right now; Dolan's movie is a far more subtle and elegant creature. Indeed, and here is the previously-mentioned complex part of the whole, this is a film which seeks to and succeeds in giving elucidation to slender, nebulous, but intensely powerful emotions of the kind more often addressed in literature than cinema. The jealousy felt by Marie and Frank does not lead them towards the kind of outlandish actions that might be trotted out in a lesser flick, it instead simmers within them, gnawing away at the soul in a manner that is both realistic and recognisable.

Not that this is any way a heavy film. While deep feelings are skilfully evoked, they are not sluggishly laboured over, and a vein of very funny humour is never far from the surface. Punctuating the main triangulated tale of Frank, Marie and Nico are a series of talking heads - three young figures offering perspectives on love and sex that are both amusing and slightly pathetic. I was particularly tickled by the web-obsessed girl's observation about getting into a momentary whirlwind of excitement when you see a new email has arrived, thinking it may be something deeply exciting, only to find it is spam from Amazon. All the main three cast members produce sterling comedic performances, with Monia Chokri just nosing ahead of her co-stars in terms of scoring laughs. Some of the wittiest moments of the film arrive when her self-consciously prim and aloof Marie dilutes her usual too-cool facade in the effort to impress Nico. We can sense Marie is castigating herself on one level for making these compromises, yet she is so in thrall to her attraction she is incapable of behaving any other way.

The aesthetic treatment afforded to the material is, for the most part, utterly splendid as well. For starters, I suspect we are going to be hearing a great deal more of Bang Bang, a 1966 slice of European languid moodiness trilled by Italian chanteuse Dilada, which is played several times throughout the film. Certainly in the screening I attended, all the younger audience members suddenly stopped shuffling towards the exits and affixed their peepers to the end credits when the list of deployed songs ran by.

The assurance exhibited by Dolan the director, the two guys-one girl love triangle plot, and the sheer coolness of the piece seem sure to trigger multitudinous comparisons to Jules et Jim (the director of that movie, François Truffaut, being one of the masters at expressing complex human emotions via the cinematic medium). However Heartbeats' broad humour and sensitivity, plus the understated way in which much of the film is shot, put me more in the mind of Miloš Forman's A Blonde in Love. Actually, maybe A Blonde in Love intercut with Tom Ford's A Single Man might be more accurate, as the film periodically grinds to a halt in order to serve up a lavish musical interludes, some innocuous daily action being reframed by Dolan as deeply glamourous spectacle.

Ravishing as these sequences look, wonderful artistic achievements that they are, I was less comfortable with them than I was with the rest of the movie. For me, they skidded dangerously close to the territory of the pretentious perfume ad. If we're rooting around for flaws too, then you might argue that the ending is less certain than what precedes it, with Dolan seemingly unsure of when to end his movie. Several points occur at which proceedings could have been very satisfactorily wrapped up.

Tiny shortcomings though in what is a marvelous film brimming with elan. Heartbeats offers yet further cause to curse Dolan for the prodigious nature of his filmmaking talent, and another reason to castigate your talentless, rapidly aging self for your own shortcomings.

Rating on a scale of 5 spam emails from Amazon: 4.5

Release date: TBC
Directed by: Xavier Dolan
Written by: Xavier Dolan
Cast: Xavier Dolan, Monia Chokri, Niels Schneider
Rating: TBC
Running time: 105 minutes