Heartbeats and the aesthetics of a generation

In addition to being a cinephile’s tribute (to Wong Kar Wai’s slow motion, Almodovar’s colors and Truffaut and Godard’s fashions…), Heartbeats is also a visual interpretation of modernity.

So familiar are we with the whole vintage phenomenon -through our peculiar excitement for the arcane and our glorifying of decline- that we sometimes forget to take notice of it. Not Xavier Dolan, a film genius who hails from Quebec. His camera, neither moralizing nor complacent, captures the hybrid aesthetic heritage of the present generation.

Dolan’s heroine, the disarming yet stylish Marie (played by Monia Chokri), embodies beautifully the meeting of past and modernity. She goes out, drinks, smokes, has all the concerns of a modern woman, and sleeps with men she despises. Through her passion for clothes and for 60s design, she is firmly rooted in the past. Her Paul&Joe-clad contemporaries mock her penchant for retro fashions: « They say I look like a 60s housewife », she tells her best friend Francis (played by Xavier Dolan himself). His answer: « Your dress is rather anachronistic ». She insists: « But it’s vintage! ». « Yeah, well, that doesn’t mean it looks good! ».

While Marie’s love of all things old is perhaps excessive (she sends a love letter sealed with wax), Francis embodies a more complex appropriation of the past. A James Dean wannabe with a dubious quiff, he wears London-preppy pants and Paul Smith sweaters. His style is subtly old-hat, but sufficiently pure to still be modern. His rigidity and freshness are reminiscent of Tom Ford’s darlings.

Marie and Francis are in love with the same man, Nicolas. Nicolas is not as trendy as them, with a shapeless t-shirt that droops over his shoulders and baggy trousers. He is the fallen angel, a fair-skinned pretty boy that Rohmer might have cast in (…) He comes from the back country, is immune to influences and is definitely the character whose appearance is the most timeless. The scene, in which Marie and Francis show each other their gifts for Nicolas (a straw hat and an orange cashmere sweater) symbolizes the transfer of influence through objects.

The variety of aesthetic infuences is even more potent in the sets: the kitsch backdrop of the hair salon where Francis tends to his quiff, the entrance of the old neighborhood theater, are in contrast with the grungy interiors of student apartments, louche Japanese restaurants and the blue disco wig of the girl who hits on Nicolas.

Knowing hommage to the New Wave or record of the retro habits of young people in the 21st century? The line is blurry. It is precisely the clash of filmic references that reveals in Dolan’s work an eclectic sense of aesthetics; a knowing synthesis of folk, pop, rock and electro. Of course, it is the portrait of group within a generation (urban hipsters), and in that sense it is limited. But in an epoch where design and fashion have become way mroe democratic, at a time when the turntable is rivalling the ipod, who really is safe from being labelled a retro-hipster?