Love Songs (2007)

I highly recommend this movie to everyone who likes to watch romantic movies - but with one warning : this is a French movie which means there's nothing typical about it.By now I have watched it a couple of times, and every time I discover one more layer to it.The actors (always wonderful Louis Garrel, and the others also), the plot , Paris itself and the simply wonderful music ( after watching this you'll most certainly download the soundtrack)...I love everything about it.I wish I could be in your place right now, and have the opportunity to watch this movie for the first time! If you like french movies - don't miss this one!

I've been a fan of Louis Garrel ("The Dreamers") and Ludivine Sagnier ("Swimming Pool") for a few years now, so when I heard they were starring in a romance musical, I was really excited. "Les Chansons d'Amour" aka "Love Songs" met, actually exceeded, my expectations. The film is a gorgeous, sometimes poignant and subtly funny look at love and (straight, bisexual, homosexual) relationships in contemporary Paris. Its adorably improvised musical sequences, the beauty of the music and locations, the chemistry of the ensemble cast (Chiara Mastroianni, who looks a lot like her father, the late Marcello Mastroianni, delivers a captivating performance as Sagnier's sister), all add up to the enchanting final result. This is the third film director Christophe Honoré makes with Louis Garrel (after 'Ma Mère' and 'Dans Paris'), and they announced a sequel for 2011. I will definitely check it, but it will be hard to top "Love Songs", since it ended perfectly in my eyes. Whether the sequel will disappoint or not is another story; for now, just enjoy the real gem that these chansons are... "love me less, but love me a long time". 10/10.

Paris, romance, love songs, and maybe a little Pedro Almodovar mixed in.Love Songs is just that - fourteen love songs, all very beautiful, probably available on You Tube, tied together with some dialog.I'm not impressed with Louis Garrel, but maybe I am not supposed to be.It is Ludivine Sagnier (Paris, je t'aime, Swimming Pool, 8 femmes) that sets my heart a flutter, whether she is singing or discussing the intricacies of three-way sex with her mum. No, there is no sex in the film, it's a romance.Clotilde Hesme is the third member of the menage a trois.Part 1 ended in a manner that I did not expect in a romantic film.Everything changed after the tragedy and a sadness came over the film as people struggled to find love and deal with loss.It was all about the music, however, and, in that sense, it was a good film.

I wish I could see this film at least another 3 or 4 times, before making this comment, but I can't wait telling the world (ah ah) how much I loved it! This film is a huge and wonderful homage to a great deal of things. 'Great things' such as love, life, death... and more 'minor things' (?) such as youth, friendship, music, Paris, actors and actresses, directors such as Stanley Donen, Jacques Demy, etc. And still, this film manages to stay incredibly fresh, new, full of veiled references (I couldn't help smiling with delight, when seeing Chiara Mastroianni under her transparent umbrella, a reference to her mother, Catherine Deneuve, in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg). And the film goes on like that, like on a tight rope, with actors perched on their frail voices, never ridiculous, always moving and/or witty. It keeps moving (never a dull moment) and it keeps moving you. Never vulgar, never cheap, never shocking. A marvel of lightness. Could it be the unbearable lightness of what we call life?