My favourite moment of Toronto International Film Festival 2011 was the gala screening of Christophe Honoré’s Beloved, with an exclusive presentation by Honoré and the last-minute addition of Louis Garrel. Christophe Honoré spoke about making the film and lovable, raffish Louis cracked jokes throughout (thank you Catherine and Chiara for being ‘unavailable’).
In tribute to the anniversary of the 9/11 attack, a theme that crops up in Beloved, a poignant short documentary about TIFF, which was in full swing at the time of the horrors. It was inspirational and moving and was fitting for the film.
Refusing to let the legacy of French musicals be killed off by modern cynicism, Christophe Honoré revisits the genre with Beloved (Les Bien Aimés), his last musical offering being Love Songs (Les Chansons d’Amour) in 2007.
For many, it will come as no surprise that Beloved features the Honoré Dream Team of Ludivine Saigner, Louis Garrel and Chiara Mastroianni, with the stellar additions of Catherine Deneuve, Milos Forman and Paul Schneider.
The film begins in glorious 1960s colour (think Jacques Demy’s archetypal musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) when Madeleine’s (Catherine Deneuve) life changes forever when she steals a pair of Roger Vivier shoes from the Paris boutique.
Madeleine stumbles into a second career of turning tricks and falls in love with her john, Jaronil (Rasha Bukvic), a Czech medical student. He takes his new bride back to bleak Prague, but his infidelity and coldness breaks up their marriage and Madeleine flees back to Paris. In search of a more stable existence, she marries a French Gendarme, however Jaronil never leaves her life completely.
Flash forward a few decades and the focus is on Madeleine’s free spirited daughter Vera, who works as a teacher (a much tamer career than her mother’s) but is constantly searching for something more in life. It’s the late-90s and Vera visits London with her friend (Louis Garrel) and one-time lover Clément.
At an underground gig, Vera becomes mesmerised by Henderson, the American drummer in a rock band on tour, who turns out to be gay. Thus ensues some post-modern confused as they later share a passionate fumble in the public toilets, overheard by Clément, who lets out his suppressed emotions and beats up Henderson.
Later in the film, Vera flies to New York to further complicate her now absent relationship with Henderson but her plane is diverted to Montreal, luckily escaping the tragedy of 9/11. Add to this Vera’s desire for motherhood, the looming shadow of AIDS, a disastrous threesome, reckless sexual behaviour and a complete emotional breakdown – serious stuff for a musical, you might think!
I couldn’t help finding the relationship between Vera and Henderson slightly unconvincing, but hey, some people do have love lives as tangled and messy as this, and it really drives home Honoré’s point that life in the 21st century can be much more difficult than that in the 1960s.
More ambitious, grown-up and sombre than Love Songs, Beloved is stylish and at times beautiful, leading on from ‘Parisian cool’ to a more global dialogue. The first narrative is more enjoyable to watch, but there are heart-warming, comedic moments later on, such as when Vera comes home to find Madeleine and Jaronil in bed.
Honoré reunited with Love Songs composer Alex Beaupain and the well-crafter, emotive music is trademark Honoré.
I walked out of the film feeling emotionally overwhelmed and drained by the melancholy conclusion, but Madeleine’s theme ‘Je peux vivre sans t’aimer’ never left my head for the rest of TIFF11, like ‘I will wait for you’ from Jacque Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and I was later skipping around Toronto, enchanted by another Honoré classic.