Les amours Imaginaires (2010) [Heartbeats]
Boy and girl are friends. They meet a new friend, through mutual friends: Nicolas.
Nicolas: beautiful, charming, hot, nice, cute, smart, sensual, playful, alternative, is a magnet to both Francis and Marie. And Nick seems to either not notice this or do it on purpose, because you can't tell what way he swings. And Marie and Francis start competing, resentful first and hateful then.
Feelings:
I would say this movie is extremely real. The friendship is more protagonic than the romance. You can see how the decisions the characters make have an origin and an impact, so great performance and, idk, story development.
Shooting:
The way the movie is filmmed is weird, but it works somehow. We have snipets of interviews throught the movie, where characters that arent in the movie talk about their own experiences with rejection and heartbreak. Besides that, there's a lot of "filling" and "artistic" shots, that's basically the characters walking in slow-mo, and that gets old fairly quick. Now, there's also a lot of camera movement to show different focal points (anxious hands, a subject that the characters are talking about, the clothes that they are going to wear...). So it's slow at times but very dinamic too.
Costumes:
Our main characters have very distinct outfits to characterize them. Marie is a vintage lover and it never disappears. Francis is a male casual fashion icon and it shows, and Nick is a carefree indie boi. Those three aestethics have no problem interacting on 2020, but it's very fashion forward for 2010, like some really good omen. The rest of the characters, tho... they are very 2010's.
Pacing:
The pacing is kinda off. It starts really really slow and then picks up but almost speeds off by the end. There's lot of silences taken by facial expressions or camera movements or, well, slowmos. The end could have used some more minutes to really drive the point home but it feels like it was meant to be left unsaid.
General vibe:
This movie feels real. There's not a lot of narration nor exposition, what happens in the screen is what you would see if you were standing there, right? So you have to fill in those spaces by thinking and imagining.
The characters are vulnerable for us: Francis shows the sadness side, while Marie shows the angry side; both are faces for the question "Why can't you just love me?" Whenever we see them we can see their anxious thoughts and fears. And they really open up about it. They have their monologues about it, but it's just a crush right? It's also a broken friendship, and you can see that they can see it.
Anyway, the characters are put in a extreme situation, both falling for the same guy who seems to both love and get bored of them in equeal parts. What can they do if it only helps to deepen what they already carry inside?
Message:
In the end friendship will always be more important than romance. And also romance seems to be a scape, a solution for everything going on in yout life. It scares you it is the answer and it scares you if it isn't, but you want to love and be loved nontheless.
Maybe there are things you have to work on with different people. And to end it, I would quote one of the final lines, but I don't want to type it in spanish, and I certainly don't speak french. It's about sleeping with someone by your side, close together, and to wake up with them, close together. For metaphorical protection.
Other movies like it:
A mix between the tone of Those People [2015] and the topic of Naomi and Ely's no Kiss List [2015].
Overall score:
7,5/10.
Bros before hoes, work your feelings out.
