Beloved – review

Like his Les Chansons d'Amour, Christophe Honoré's Beloved (aka Les Bien-Aimés) is a homage to the French new wave and especially to Jacques Demy's musicals Les Parapluies de Cherbourg and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort. But the film lacks Demy's lightness and charm, as its well-heeled, beautifully dressed characters dance and sing themselves from the 1960s to 2007. They fall in love, practise a little stylish prostitution and, as the action moves from Prague to Paris to London to Montreal, they're affected by, but do not genuinely experience, the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Aids crisis in the 80s, and the horrors of 9/11. Catherine Deneuve is as wonderful as she was in her early films with Demy, and her screen daughter is played by her real life daughter, the enchanting Chiara Mastroianni, who like Ludivine Sagnier and Louis Garrel, starred in Les Chansons d'Amour. Those who like Beloved will file it under guilty pleasures.