Love Songs (2007)

Please don't spend money on this.

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

'Les chansons d'amour' (= French for 'the love songs') deals with a complex mix of love-affairs, heterosexual as well as homosexual. Extending itself to work and family-life, this myriad focuses on the sudden death of a key female participant -- happening before this movie is half on its way. The following mourning-process complicates the plot even more.This film shows a degree of touch and refinement, to which only the French are capable of. Presented in its usual light French way, making use of songs. A way that tells all without ever burdening your mind.'Les chansons d'amour's scenery is all in Paris, and enjoys a very competent shooting. Both male and female lead Louis Garrel and Ludivine Sagnier truly stand out.

*contains minor spoilers after dotted lineI was really reluctant to see another Honoré-Garrel pairing, as the last one I saw (Ma Mère) was seriously awful, to add to it, Les Chansons d'Amour is a musical. Not being a fan of musicals AT ALL, Honoré flawlessly intertwined the singing, the acting, and the plot so well that without the singing, the movie would be totally incomplete (unlike other musicals where it's the obvious song & dance numbers that take away from the film). Another feat of this film, is the new representation of romantic love, between men, something we rarely see in film (if not stereotypical portrayals of gay men). After this film, you leave not seeing it as another "brokeback mountain type gay man's film" but as love between people, regardless of gender. Not uncommon of Honoré or Garrel's work, Les Chansons d'Amour is wrapped around a somewhat "taboo" plot of threesomes and young homosexual love. The overall acting was great, especially Louis Garrel. Garrel plays Ismaël so amazingly charming that you quickly fall in love with him. You begin to feel his pain, to the point where you completely understand why he does everything he does in the film. Not to be out done, Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet, played Erwann so seductively that you almost forget how weirdly obsessive his character is. At times, I found myself teetering back and forth between rooting for Erwann to win his love and for him to fail miserably. The only reason why I gave this film a 9/10 is for minor reasons and annoyance with some of the side-plots of the film. With that said, Les Chansons d'Amour has flown under the radars for too long (completely overshadowed by Brokeback Mountain, not nearly as good as Les Chansons d'Amour) and it would be a bad move to miss out on this fine specimen of cinematic storytelling.----------------------------------------------------------- The dynamic between Ismaël and Erwann is so complicated and unorthodoxly beautiful,that at the end of the film you leave completely unsure if Ismaël really loves Erwann, but you don't really care because you know that for the present moment they need each other, maybe not forever but for the "now".

I wonder why this gem of a film was released in secret, at least in the USA. I was literally dragged to see it by some friends - to whom I'll be eternally grateful. The film lives on its own with glances to the great Jacques Demy. Rains and umbrellas, songs and impossible love. Louis Garrel must be, by now, considered one of the greatest film presences of the new millennium. He is devastating and his relationship with the doomed Ludivine Sagnier has all the warmth and sexiness of the great romances. The entrance of the adorable Gregoire Leprince-Ruignet takes all our preconceptions and turns them around. This sensual coupling full of innocence has the power to seal a tragedy with love. I adored this movie and the makers should protest vigorously as the way the film was distributed in the United States.

It is, of course, possible that I watched a different film to the previous posters, it is equally possible that the previous posters have never seen a Real musical or, indeed a Real French film. Suffice it to say that were it not for Brigitte Rouan and Chirara Mastroianni this would have been a total disaster. If ever two young people deserved each other those people are Ludo Sagnier and Lou Garrel - and if he would hit on Ludo off-screen and keep away from Valeria I'd be a much happier bunny. Christophe Honore has a penchant for sleaze and chances are he figured that the problem with his Ma Mere was that it needed saccharine music and lyrics to disguise the sleaze (Ma Mere, in case you missed it was the one where Lou Garrel got off with his ma, Isabelle Huppert and masturbated beside her corpse though on reflection I guess music and lyrics couldn't have done that much to save it) so this time around he laces the down-market sex with interchangeable melodies having only a beat rather than a tune and lyrics as banal as those Demy wrote for Les Paraplueis de Cherbourg. On the other hand there are some nice location shots of Paris but even here Honore can't resist having Sagnier check out a movie at the Brady, a cinema where Catherine Breillat films play and where Deep Throat played for a couple of years. Go if you must.