Les Chansons d’amour

Toronto International Film Festival Program Book
2007

Les Chansons d’amour | Love Songs
Christophe Honoré
FRANCE, 2007
French 95 minutes Colour/35mm
Production Company: Alma Films
Producer: Paulo Branco
Screenplay: Christophe Honoré
Cinematographer: Rémy Chevrin
Editor: Chantal Hymans
Production Designer: Samuel Deshors
Sound: Guillaume Le Braz
Music: Alex Beaupain
Principal Cast: Louis Garrel, Ludivine Sagnier, Chiara Mastroianni, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet, Clotilde Hesme
Production: Alma Films

“As-tu déja aimé / Pour la beauté du geste?”—two lines of a song from Les Chansons d’amour

This playful oddity comes from one of French cinema’s most interesting younger minds. Riffing on Jacques Demy’s Les Parapluies de Cherbourg, Christophe Honoré has created a scruffy, formidably charming musical about love and loss in contemporary Paris.

In its tone, Les Chansons d’amour combines the sexual freedom of Honoré's Ma mère, with the goofiness (and lyrical inflections) of his more recent Dans Paris. The film is roughly divided into three sections—“the departure,” “the absence” and “the return”—that relate to a few months in the life of Ismaél (the floppy-haired Louis Garrel, who is rapidly becoming the planet’s favourite art-house pin-up boy).

At first, Les Chansons d’amour feels almost campy, like a sixties sex comedy, as the silly, somewhat precious Ismaél consorts with his long-time petite amie Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) and their recently acquired threesome third, the mostly lesbian Alice (Clotilde Hesme), in a way-too-fabulous apartment. But young, polyamorous puppy love veers into tragedy as Julie perishes of a massive coronary on a Paris street. A grief-stricken Ismaél separates from hard-headed Alice and fends off the advances of Julie’s sister (played with moving desperation by Chiara Mastroianni). Through an odd turn of events, Ismaél finds himself stalked by Erwann, an enthusiastic young gay Breton college student, played with insouciant charm by Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet, a major acting discovery seen first in André Téchiné’s Les Egarés. The two men fall into a sweetly romantic and sexy entanglement, much to Ismaél’s surprise. Erwann’s powerfully trumpeted amorous feelings make Ismaél realize that love is still possible for him—if not with Erwann, then another human being capable of true affection.

Honoré handles these complex shifts in tone with grace and a great deal of wit. The songs, which are frequent and unannounced, are full of wonderful observations about love, family, death and Paris itself. They have an old-fashioned quality, recalling the glory days of Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg without being overly reverential. Some of the actors have better voices than others— Leprince-Ringuet is especially good—but the dog-eared charm they all bring to the material makes Les Chansons d’amour a wonderfully satisfying experience all around.
—Noah Cowan