Chansons & Daughters
Beloved
(Les bien-aimés)
How Long Must We Sing This Song?
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
NR | 135 min
Beloved‘s a love story (times two), for the ages, and by ages, we mean it takes 9ever to go from Paris’ swinging 60s, to the morose post-9/11 world, but at least there’s singing all along the way! Â in French!!!
Yes, we’ve been down this Christophe Honoré path before, with 2007’s Love Songs (Les Chansons d’amour), and we haven’t stop singing that film’s praises.  More like singing that film’s soundtrack (we actually do, and the songs are all in French!!!), and less so about the film itself.  And that’s OK, cause them songs were AMAZING!!!  And the movie itself was pretty darn good too
So what about try #2, with some returning regulars (Catherine Deneuve, Ludivine Sagnier, Chiara Mastroianni, Louis Garrel) + some newbies (Paul Schneider, Radivoje Bukvic & Milos Forman!!!)?  The song remains the same?  Kinda, but with more emotional weight (AIDS!), which also weighs down the affair a lil too much, cause 135 minutes is a long time to hear French people sing about anything (even if it was about naked women eating Popeyes), when we’ve basically already seen this movie before
BUT!  It’s a French modern musical and you can’t really hate on French modern musicals, unless you hate hot & sexy French people singing songs about love and love’s lost and love found, again and again!!!  And do you not want to see mother Deneuve play screen-mother to her real life daughter Mastroianni, again?  Heck, we wish every movie employed Deneuve/Mastroianni to play mother-daughter!  Heck, we wish that they were our mother and our sister (no offense to our mother and our sister)!  Heck!!!  And they sing, a lot!!!! IN FRENCH!!!  And so does Paul Schneider (in English)!!!!  PAUL SCHNEIDER SINGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Verdictgo: it’s no Love Songs (Les Chansons d’amour), but we’ll take it over not having a quasi-sequel, so low end Jeepers Worth A Peepers
Beloved sings its song this Friday in limited release
and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…