IFC Films
Ludivine Sagnier as Julie, Clotilde Hesme as Alice and Louis Garrel as Ismaël in "Love Songs."
Prowling the chilly, rain-swept streets of Paris like a disconsolate cat, pursued by at least four actual or potential lovers of various genders (one of them a ghost), Ismaël Benoliel, played by the startlingly handsome Louis Garrel, is a classic lonely hero of French cinema. To be specific, Ismaël belongs to the socially disconnected, emotionally damaged tradition of French New Wave protagonists. "Love Songs," the film by 37-year-old writer-director Christophe Honoré that features Garrel amid a tremendous supporting cast, is part of an ongoing effort to reanimate the spirit of the New Wave in the context of a new century and a vastly different French society.
You could describe "Love Songs," in fact, as a blend of François Truffaut's wistful Parisian sentimentalism and Pedro Almodóvar's acrid polysexual comedy, which were never far apart to begin with (given the difference in climate and native temperament between France and Spain). But Honoré is also tapping into another French tradition, one he hinted at in his lovable and miscellaneous "Dans Paris," also starring Garrel. You see, "Love Songs" is a musical that blends young love, bedroom farce and tragedy in the bittersweet-chocolate vein of Jacques Demy's classic "Umbrellas of Cherbourg" (or, more precisely, in the vein of Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau's underappreciated 1998 AIDS musical, "Jeanne and the Perfect Guy").