BELOVED
Considered one of the inheritors of the Nouvelle Vauge's legacy, Christophe Honore has been offering innovative and charming films in the mode of Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard's early works like JULES AND JIM and A WOMAN IS A WOMAN, respectively. Following exceptional films such as LOVE SONGS, DANS PARIS, and MA MERE, Honore returns to the screen with BELOVED, an epic and effervescent love story spanning decades. The film stars the most magnetic French stars including the beautiful Ludivine Sagnier, the alluring Chiara Mastroianni, the brooding Louis Garrel, and the iconic, the enigmatic Catherine Deneuve.
"BELOVED is at once whimsical and heartfelt, alive to the absurdity and perversity of amorous behavior and also to the gravity and intensity of human emotions."
-A.O. Scott, NEW YORK TIMES
"BELOVED is both broody and bright, steeped in amour in all its Gallic permutations - mad, destined, unrequited, sustaining."
-Sherri Linden, LOS ANGELES TIMES
"This stylish film is enormous fun, whirling and warbling across four decades of amour."
-Mark Jenkins, NPR
In the freewheeling Paris of the '60s, young Madeleine (Ludivine Sagnier) - who has gone from selling shoes to sleeping with men for money - falls for a handsome Czech doctor, Jaromil (Rasha Bukvic), who she soon marries and joins in Prague. A baby daughter is born, but Jaromil's infidelities and the arrival of Russian tanks in Prague leaded Madeleine back to France - though the love between them still burns. Thirty years later in London, we follow Madeleine's daughter, Vera (Chiara Mastroianni), who has fallen in love with a musician (Paul Schneider) who is incapable of devoting himself to her, while her ex (Honore regular Louis Garrel) still pines for her. Meanwhile, in Paris, a re-married Madeleine (Catherine Deneuve) has rekindled her love affair with Jaromil (Milos Forman).
Directed by Christophe Honore. Unrated.
France, 2012, Digital Projection, 135minutes, Color, French with English Subtitles.