Heartbeats: Critic Reviews

[A] madly stylish Montreal-made delight...

The new movie confirms Mr. Dolan as a wildly talented, carelessly extravagant filmmaker nakedly in thrall to idols like Wong Kar-wai, Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Bernardo Bertolucci and Pedro Almodovar.

It's likeable enough, though there's far too much slow motion.

There is something rather flimsy about Heartbeats. That said, it certainly shows that Dolan has quite a career ahead of him.

Spends 100 minutes dispensing painful examples of how infatuation turns people into idiots.

All the dramatic protraction gets at both a heaviness of romantic desire and emotional viscosity.

An undeniable triumph of artifice, Heartbeats acts as a kind of bizarro fantasy mirror, aestheticizing and glamorizing the madness that arises from unrequited sexual obsession, as drunk on beauty and blind to truth as its deluded singles.

The film couples high comedy with spiritual solitude. That's not just a slo-mo stunt, it's a cockeyed triumph.

Girl likes boy who likes boy (or maybe he doesn't) sounds like that recent reality-TV scenario, but there's very little reality at play in this hollowed-out, tricked-up Montreal-based drama.

Alas, although Heartbeats is quite lovely to look at, there isn't much going on after all.

Not too deep but oh so pretty, "Heartbeats" presents a hyper-stylized look at a love triangle, a sort of "Jules and Jim" for millennials.

Xavier Dolan is the new darling of Canadian cinema, and it's easy to see why.

"Heartbeats" looks good, and it has some funny dialogue. But there isn't enough to sustain the film's running time.

Quebec director Xavier Dolan's follow-up to his precocious art-house hit, I Killed My Mother, is a sweet and creamy, puffed-up dessert of a film.

Dolan is proving to be adept at and unafraid of teasing out the flaws of his characters, seemingly more concerned with whether they are interesting than whether an audience will like them.

Lushly, not to say swishly made, the whole thing is really just a pseudo-poetic trifle.

Every frame is a joy to look at, and the three leads very appealing.

Hipster's delight.

Ultimately, Dolan's image-led central characters and their shallow, bitchy concerns won't appeal to everyone, but those who've experienced l'amour fou themselves will find plenty to enjoy.

It can seem as if style is all in Dolan's films, but as well as revelling in its pleasures, they also dissect its limitations - sometimes without anaesthetic.

Dolan has a gift but he hasn't fully unwrapped it.

Opening with a recurring set of interviews with love scorned young people, Heartbeats lays down a tonne of 20-something sarcasm communicated through tongue-clicks, snide smirks and eye-rolls galore.

Sumptuously photographed and elegantly stylised, Heartbeats' exterior is as seductive as Schneider's R-Pattzalike. Dig beneath the surface, though, and there ain't much there.

A fizzing delight that tips a nod to the masters of the French New Wave without sacrificing its identity or sense of freshness. Recommended.