‘Love Songs’: Lots of Singing in the Rain

By >Bob Strauss

The latest film by French New Wave aficionado Christophe Honore pays structural tribute to Jacques Demy’s “Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” but beyond that, similarities are few. Set in a perpetually rainy blue-gray modern Paris, “Love Songs” charts a fun and flirty menage a trois with intriguing underlying tensions. Whenever Ismael (Louis Garel from Honore’s “Dans Paris”), Julie (“Swimming Pool’s” Ludivine Sagnier) or Alice (Clotilde Hesme) have trouble expressing their feelings, they unselfconsciously shift into warbling Alex Beaupain’s emotionally brutal, carnally graphic and quite beautiful songs.

Tragedy strikes about halfway through and a number of well- etched peripheral characters lend their melancholy voices to the aching, searching chorus, but Honore retains a playful touch even as moods grow dark and gnarly. Somehow, he also retains an overriding natural tone despite all the singing and the occasional New Wave formal flourish. And while the filmmaker succeeds at keeping it real most of the time, a blazing romanticism informs the whole oddly engaging endeavor; as, of course, it should.

LOVE SONGS – Three stars

>Not rated: language, sex, nudity 1 hr. 35 min. In French with English subtitles.

>Playing: Playing: Music Hall, Beverly Hills.

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