Heartbeats

Mar 18 - Mar 24, 2011

(Xavier Dolan, Canada, 2010, 35mm, 95 min)

Seattle Premiere!

Xavier Dolan—at 21 years old one of the youngest filmmakers in North America—continues to impress with this sophomore effort. The film follows good friends Francis and Mary. One night they meet Nick, a young man from the country who has just settled in Montreal. After multiple encounters, troubled by signs and omens (some real, some imagined), Francis and Mary fall deeper and deeper into a fantastical obsession. Soon they find themselves on the precipice of a love duel that threatens the friendship they once thought indestructible. Wrapped in a hyper-stylized pop cultural patchwork, Heartbeats samples unabashedly from Bach to House of Pain to The Knife, in the light of colorful Audrey Hepburn-vintage stroboscope, back silhouettes in slow-motion and edgy editing. Dolan’s film universe stretches from the French New Wave via Woody Allen to Wong Kar-wai and Wes Anderson, never compromising the originality of the present work.

Read a profile of Xavier Dolan in the NY Times

"The new movie confirms Mr. Dolan as a wildly talented, carelessly extravagant filmmaker nakedly in thrall to idols like Wong Kar-wai, Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, Bernardo Bertolucci and Pedro Almodóvar." —New York Times

“A stunning confirmation of Dolan’s precocious talent, and a major advance, technically if not otherwise, from the first. It’s a little too neatly drawn, but Dolan’s passion and vitality suffuses every frame, and makes me optimistic for his future—and the future of cinema, for that matter. I love Heartbeats even more than I like it.” —Scott Tobias, The Onion AV Club
 
“Xavier Dolan is the real deal. A love triangle between friends is handled with acuteness and thrilling filmic volleys.  Dolan may be swiping from others (Wong Kar-Wai, Woody Allen, etc.), but he mixes his influences into something strange and unique. If filmmakers are ever truly born, Dolan is proof.” —Matt Prigge, Philadelphia Weekly
 
“…seductive hymn to vapid young love…Acutely observant of psychological complexities… Enthralling.” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
 
“I truly adored
Heartbeats...A slyly funny, eye-pleasing, film about a doomed love triangle… playfully stylish and you can see traces of Godard, Bertolucci, and Wong Kar Wai, it’s also painfully on target of how we can really drive ourselves crazy when it comes to affairs of the heart.”  —Dennis Dermody, PAPER Magazine

 


 

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