This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. The newest film by Xavier Dolan "Heartbeats" (2010) is James Joyce’s "Ulises" of longing, hope and sincere, naive love. This metaphysical shipwreck occurs in the triangle made up of young Marie, Nicolas and Francis. Marie and Francis being alone contemplatively, receive Nicolas as his idol, the love of their life, identifying him as Michelangelo's David and ancient boy in love foreplay with another boy. In the end, but that they will transform the imaginary love with Nicolas into bitter memory, and they will lose their sincere friendship with him too. Comic note is pulled through the friendly, sometimes impulsive, match between Marie and Francis during their feat of conquering the attention of Nicolas. Each in its own way is trying to appeal to Nicolas. Francis imagines that the sincerity of his feelings will magnetize Nicolas (which is no exception Marie too!). Marie who is in error because of a casual impression from Nicolas in the bookstore, she sends a poem to him but apparently even that approach will not exalt her relationship with him at the levels reflected in her head because Nicolas remained deaf for her lonely cry behind the poem. Francis gives him a poster with the love of his life on it. The immediate confession by Francis and Mary in front of Nicolas eventually destroys their dreams. But is really Nicolas the destroyer of their dreams? In my opinion, not at all. But also unrequited love is a tragedy, because, ultimately, the ancient boy around whose radiant charisma and beauty Marie and Francis vegetate, to them he suddenly becomes a barbarian in their hearts, anathemized by the animal outcry of Francis, driving out the "predator". After two years, shortly after meeting with Nicolas, Marie and Francis again ran confidently and with a strong yearning for – a requited love. Undoubtedly "Heartbeats" is better achievement of Dolan than "I killed my mother", at least for me, because of deep philosophical message that this film brings. The rejection of Nicolas, as a way of rejecting the imaginary love as mediated survival of Marie and Francis and retention on the contradiction in its very existence, also means keeping the new imaginary love. Neither vegetating nor contemplation that cannot radically overcome it, can cross the imaginary horizon of love. Imaginary love in the minds of Marie and Francis did not invent the issues that plague them. In their questions and answers there is one mode of responding to reality. Once Marie and Francis ask questions, their love thought comes across their existential vegetation, this love thought is already on the road to overcome it. But unfortunately, their imaginary love for Nicolas proved itself as a light over the dark road that leads to the "abyss". Embodying’s picture of this imaginary love in a poetry language is reflected by the philosopher Karl Marx: " In your enjoyment or use of my product I would have the direct enjoyment both of being conscious of having satisfied a human need by my work" (just remember the delicate and orderly labor of Marie and Francis to win the heart of Nicolas) "that is, of having objectified man's essential nature, and of having thus created an object corresponding to the need of another man's essential nature (remember the gift of Francis of a poster with the love of Nicola’s life on it.). "I would have been for you the mediator between you and the species, and therefore would become recognised and felt by you yourself as a completion of your own essential nature and as a necessary part of yourself, and consequently would know myself to be confirmed both in your thought and your love." (which, unfortunately, this understanding and recognition of imaginary love of Marie and Francis do not exist at Nicolas’ mind, so that all their labor was not free expression of life, therefore enjoyment of life too).
If Dolan is able to derive a certain comic tension from the simple threat of what could happen with these three in close quarters, he and his co-actors often spoil the mystery of the unsaid with the tells on their faces. When one pair is having a moment, Dolan inevitably trains his camera on the knowing gaze of the one left out—never so perfectly as when Nicolas lets a smirk slip while watching Francis and Marie fight over him.
Too bad that smirk is the closest Dolan comes to any kind of insight into his characters’ behavior. From the dinner-party scene on, Dolan defines them by what they look like and how they look at one another, too often indulging in those gazes without critiquing them. An undeniable triumph of artifice, Heartbeats acts as a kind of bizarro fantasy mirror, aestheticizing and glamorizing the madness that arises from unrequited sexual obsession, as drunk on beauty and blind to truth as its deluded singles.