HEARTBEATS

HEARTBEATS knows that few things are more humiliating than an unrequited crush, especially when your best friend has the same one.

Xavier Dolan’s second feature follows Francis and Marie, close friends in Montreal who both become infatuated with Nicolas, a charming newcomer with excellent hair (just like Murat's -honestly, it's uncanny) and very unclear intentions. What starts as flirtation quickly becomes a private competition. Every look, silence, outfit, text message, and half-smile gets studied like evidence in a case neither of them can win.

Dolan turns romantic obsession into style. The colours are heightened, the clothes are immaculate, the slow motion is shameless, and the soundtrack gives every minor emotional injury the scale of an opera. His use of The Knife is especially good. “PASS THIS ON” becomes the film’s key musical set-piece, a strange, funny, sexually charged moment where desire, performance, and embarrassment all occupy the same room. The song’s cool electronic pulse gives the scene a perfect tension: everyone is trying to look casual, and nobody is even close.

That’s what HEARTBEATS captures so well. Desire can make intelligent people behave like absolute idiots. Francis and Marie are ridiculous, but the joke lands because most of us have been ridiculous in exactly the same way. Dolan understands the vanity, cruelty, hope, and embarrassment of wanting someone who may only be interested in being wanted.

HEARTBEATS is young, stylish, petty, and very good at making romantic disappointment look expensive.