Love Songs
(French Musical-Operetta/Genius/IFC DVD)
Picture:
C Sound: C+ Extras: C- Film: C
No matter
what Director Christophe Honoré and Composer Alex Beaupain may say, and they
don’t anywhere on this DVD on way or the other, Love Songs wants to be some kind of updated version of The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg and even
with the visual references, this is one of the most out of tune films we have
seen in years.
Louis
Garrel (Bertolucci’s The Dreamers)
gets involved in an all-female threesome and the results are everyone braking
out into bad songs instead of the potential the story might have had with or
without music. Other people also sing,
no one sings enough and when they do sing, the lyrics are lame and the music is
almost the same. Then the film takes
some sudden turns that seem more desperate than believable and suddenly, Grease 2 seems brilliant.
Also, the
characters are underdeveloped, not very likable, we do not get to know them
enough to begin with and anyone who thinks this is speaking about the lives of any generation is out of their mind.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 image is soft and detail-challenged, with dull
color and has a generic look despite the nice locations. How this happened, we don’t know, but we will
not blame Director of Photography Remy Chevrin.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is weaker than expected for a film with any
kind of music, sounds flat, has poor surround use and is a bit unbalanced. The only extra is a trailer.
- Nicholas Sheffo
