Listonixio
Fresh and Exciting
Beystiman
It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.
Jenni Devyn
Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.
richwgriffin-227-176635
I made the mistake of thinking the Sundance channel was showing the excruciating Oprah Winfrey "Beloved" one night and missed this movie as a result. So I had to wait until I could see it on DVD. All I can say is: I simply love Christophe Honore movies (: Is it that he has a gay sensibility? Is it that I love Alex Beaupain's songs? "Love Songs" is one of my all-time favorite films as well, and for many of the same reasons.The actors in this movie are all simply superb. If I single out Milos Forman it's only because I was so surprised by his acting choices. But the trio of female stars are all wonderful, fresh and amazing. Louis Garrel and the polish actor who plays the younger Jaromil are terrific too. Paul Schneider is an actor I hope to see again in other things.I found the film exciting, not boring; the camera-work, the editing, the pacing, the music, the colors, even the length of the movie (2 hrs., 19 minutes) exhilarating! This is the kind of film that you have to surrender and allow yourself to be "inside" the movie during it's running time, without reservation.This is a movie for people who love french cinema, as I do - it's my favorite country, without exception, for movies these days.
postmortem-books
Oh sweet baby Jesus. If the cinema had fixed up the seats to the electric mains and had run through 20,000 volts every 5 minutes I might just have enjoyed this film. As it was, me, my wife and the 12 other unfortunates who had not read IMDb reviews before purchasing tickets suffered the worst 2 and one quarter hours of French cinema ever printed to pass through the gate of a projector.OK - it started fine and looked as if it was going to be a nice piece of retro-Parisien farce but then...they began to sing. What the ....! And at various stages through this loooooooooong film some character or other would start wandering through the streets of Paris, Reims, London, Montreal, wherever, and start with the stupid words ("Big Ben has melted and I can't tell the time") and turgid tunes.All the characters were unpleasant to various degrees and totally and utterly unbelievable. I was desperate for all of them to die off. Good news, two of them did, bad news, the others lived to keep on wandering the streets turgidly wittering on...
wvisser-leusden
The well-made "Les bien-aimes" (= French for "the well loved-ones") shows a pretty extended plot. Stretching from the 19-Sixties up to 2007, it focuses on the lifetime so far of the baby-boom-generation. Of those born between 1945 and, let's say, 1953.You may also consider "Les bien-aimes" as an intelligent soap. It contains all ingredients for recognizing a Babyboomer's life. Acted out by a number of France's best actors and actresses, Catherine Deneuve prominently among them.In spite of its serious tuning, this film nowhere and never puts any weight on your mind. Which is characteristic for the French cinema. Another French characteristic: it leaves you with a good aftertaste.
doddy_f3
This review can't possibly contain plot spoilers as there was no plot.Acting was average at best. Singing was just awful. I didn't even know it was a musical (term used loosely here) until someone started 'singing'.The storyline was largely incoherent and when it was coherent it was criminally bad. We, along with virtually everyone else, left the cinema before it finished so I don't know how it ended but I can guarantee that it was terrible unless the final scene was Ashton Kutcher revealing that we had all been Punk'd. All in all it was very disappointing, if slightly unintentionally hilarious, and a poor representation of the French film industry
