Saturday
Feb132016
Valentine's - Les chansons d'amour
Saturday, February 13, 2016 at 5:45PM Team Experience are sharing their favourite love scenes for Valentine's. Here's David from THE city of love...
Murtada was first to share a musical movie moment to celebrate Valentine’s, but, as the famous Shakespeare quote goes, “if music be the food of love, play on…”, and so it is that I bring you an actual Love Song - one of the gentle acoustic numbers of Christophe Honoré’s Les chansons d’amour...
The first of Honoré’s experiments with musical narration, Les chansons d’amour uses composer Alex Beaupain’s soft, winsome songs to tell the story of typically French sexual fluidity; Ismaël's (the ever-sexual Louis Garrel) threeway relationship with Ludivine Sagnier and Clotilde Hesme is rocked by a death, and among those he meets in his mourning is the younger Erwann (adorable, tousle-haired Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet), whose keen interest in him starts to draw him out of his depression. What might sound trite on paper is poignantly and sensitively addressed across the film’s narrative, with Beaupain’s lyrics eschewing metaphor for an ordinary directness, vividly recalling the great Jacques Demy and particularly The Umbrellas of Cherbourg in how it uses the music to express an oscillating variety of emotions in the same low-key timbre, consciously avoiding the generic flamboyance of the musical form as Hollywood knows it.
My favourite number in the film is the tender, erotic but melancholy Ma mémoire sale, in which Ismaël implores Erwann to wash his “dirty memory” clean of the pain of grief. It hardly sounds like a turn-on, sure, but what I continue to treasure about Honoré’s film is its confrontation of how carnality and sadness aren’t mutually exclusive, and how a man’s grief doesn’t need to be buried in order for him to move on. In this exquisite scene, Ismaël is again in sexual longing for two people at once. In this instance, only one is there, and yet Erwann's innocent, earnest difference from Ismaël's previous relationship provides a perfect remedy.
My favourite number in the film is the tender, erotic but melancholy Ma mémoire sale, in which Ismaël implores Erwann to wash his “dirty memory” clean of the pain of grief. It hardly sounds like a turn-on, sure, but what I continue to treasure about Honoré’s film is its confrontation of how carnality and sadness aren’t mutually exclusive, and how a man’s grief doesn’t need to be buried in order for him to move on. In this exquisite scene, Ismaël is again in sexual longing for two people at once. In this instance, only one is there, and yet Erwann's innocent, earnest difference from Ismaël's previous relationship provides a perfect remedy.
Our Valentine's Series
A Room With a View (1986)
Shakespeare in Love (1998)
Before Sunset (2004)
The Painted Veil (2006)
(500) Days of Summer (2009)
Beyond the Lights (2014)
Reader Comments (13)
I'd never heard of this, or seen it, but...wow. That's some beautiful filmmaking.
I adore Love Songs!
YES! I love this movie and I really like this song. But my absolutely favorite is the cutesy/flirty "As-Tu Déjà Aimé" which you guys can see on YouTube/.
Whoops. That link didn't work. Here's the url:
https://youtu.be/haV_TIkpF7c
I adored Love Songs.
Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet is so fucking cute! >.<
Love. This. Movie.
Honore is so underrated. "Beloved" was a little all over the place, but it also gave us Paul Schneider singing in French as a bilingual, bisexual punk rock drummer.
i love this movie. haven't seen it in forever.
Such a wonderful and unique film. I love it so much. I really want to watch it again. I think it has a gorgeous ending.
I LOVE THIS MOVIE. MY FAVORITE OF 2007!!!
I am glad to see love for this movie here.
You're awesome
What a wonderful film, full of great pop music! My favourite song is "J'ai cru entendre".
https://youtu.be/UkNP0LbHgKE
yes! this is one of my favorite musicals ever, Ma mémoire sale is one of the best songs written for a movie in the new century and Louis Garrel slays me hard
est un film sur les affres