Love Songs!

Opening this week at the IFC Center is Love Songs. It's a bittersweet romantic tale by one of my fave French directors, Christophe Honore (Ma Mere, Dans Paris), starring his usual muse Louis Garrel (The Dreamers) as Ismael, in the middle of a prickly menage-a-trois with Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) and Alice (Clotilde Hesme) when tragedy intercedes. Love, loss, grief and the surprising way Ismael works through his pain is told by the actors who periodically break into song. Honore's films are such an acid flashback to the 1960s French new wave movies, and Love Songs particularly recalls Jacques Demy’s unconventional musicals (The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg), but it still feels new and vibrant and works thrillingly. Wildly romantic as it is inventive.