Forget Jacques Demy if you can—though one of 'Love Songs'' cast members is Chiara Mastroianni, daughter of the Catherine Deneuve of Demy's classic 'The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.' Honoré's 'Inside Paris'/'Dans Paris' had one song written by Alex Beaupain, a duet between Romain Duris and Joana Preiss, sung over the phone, Duris' delivery full of reedy sweetness. This time the director has fulfilled a long-cherished ambition and made a full-fledged contemporary musical, with all the songs penned by Beaupain. It's set in the relatively gritty Bastille section of Paris, and it's about a ménage à trois involving two girls and a boy: Ismael (Louis Garrel), Julie (Ludivine Sagnier), and Alice (Clotilde Hesme, Garrel's girlfriend in his father's 'Regular Lovers'), whose life together leads to sorrow, separation, and resolution. Beaupain and Honoré have collaborated for 'the film on 14 songs. 'Les chansons d'amour' is also the director's third collaboration with Louis Garrel, though he didn't plan it that way originally and Garrel had to convince him he could do a singing role.

This quick follow-up to 'Dans Paris,' which like it, but musically, portrays love problems, family loyalties, and depression with an intermittently light New Wave-ish touch, is divided into three sections: Departure, Absence, and Return. Julie seems to accept Alice in the trio to please Ismael, but she wants him to herself and regrets his refusal to have a child. Perhaps she's imploding, because she drops dead in front of a boite, like River Phoenix in front of the Viper Club, but of natural causes.

Alice considers it only right to move out; she can't take the place of two women, and her bisexuality no longer protects her from the full onslaught of Ismael's (and Garrel's) impetuous charms. Ismael, whom Julie's family adored, moves quickly, if shakily, forward, but Julie's stagnant older sister Jeanne (Mastroiaani), who suffers from survivor guilt, keeps turning up (a little tiresomely) at the trio's apartment. Alice had recently connected with another guy, a Breton musician Gwendal (Yannick Renier, brother of Jérémie). She doesn't seem to need Gwendal any more either, but Gwendal's gay brother Erwann (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet of Téchiné's 'Strayed') conceives a passion for Ismael and begins stalking him. (Note calling Erwann a "college student" could mislead American readers because 'collège' generally means middle school, and he's very young.) When Erwann keeps turning up, Alice, who works at the same office as Ismael, thinks this is an indirect effort on Gwendal's part to get back together. Ismael realizes what Erwann's up to, though, and at first laughs it off and tells him to get lost.

But Ismael's lost himself—he's half-Jewish and seems to represent the wandering, rootless type; we never see his family or hear of his origin in any detail—and though he may have the gift of good cheer, he doesn't know where he's going, even sexually. As the film ends, he's actually settling into what's become both a romantic and a sexual affair with the determined Erwann--one of those young gay boys who knows early on exactly who he is and what he wants--and begs him, in the film's final line, "Love me less, but love me a long time." Honoré's collaboration on the screenplay with auteur Gael Morel may explain this highly gay-friendly resolution, which will no doubt startle, if not offend, some members of the original Demy generation. But a ménage à trois that's not bi- or gay-friendly wouldn't make much sense—not in this century, which Honoré, whatever his virtues and faults, firmly inhabits.

American viewers aren't as likely to appreciate the many rhymes between French film families and traditions appreciatively noted by Jean-Baptiste Morain in Les Inrockuptibles last June when this film debuted in Paris. What they may grasp and enjoy is the buoyancy and speed of Honoré's film-making, which makes a virtue of low-budget necessity. Harder to tune in to at times is the director's cheerful way with sadness and depression, to be found here as it was in 'Dans Paris.' Some of the songs may feel like wallowing in sorrow, but they're better seen as singing the way out of it. Honoré lets the song come to you straight, without video-ready production numbers or irony, and the actors all do their own natural singing, only occasionally with a little trouble in the lip-syncing of their pre-recorded voices. The trouble is Honoré doesn't seem to play very well stateside, and if 'Inside Paris' got a mediocre reception, the offbeat musical element may make his 'Love Songs' even less accessible to Americans—though the romance between Garrel and Leprince-Ringuet should go down well with gay viewers, and anyone might respond to the warm depiction of a first love. It's not that the songs are hard to take; it's their typically French lightness that may make them hard to grasp in this country, where people are used to being hit over the head. Likewise Louis Garrel's playfulness, to which this director has given increasingly free rein, can be enormously appealing if you're up for it, but seems to rub some audiences, especially Anglo ones, the wrong way. Nonetheless as time goes on this film clearly has passionate devotees all over. Mark Olsen's remark in 'Film Comment' rings true: "Christophe Honoré's films aren't just films you like--you develop weird little crushes on them." The songs in the film have a rich life on YouTube and there you can see the actors and composer performing them at the Divan du Monde in Paris at a CD launching. The audience understandably walked out singing some of the lines. They grow on you.

'Love Songs'/'Chansons d'amour' is part of the Rendez-Vous with French Cinema series 2008 at Lincoln Center Feb. 29-March 9, 2008. US distributor IFC Films, US limited release from March 19, 2008.

DEFINITE SPOILERS--GIVES AWAY THE ENDING TOO.

This takes place in Paris (it's subtitled). There's three people who are sleeping and having sex together--Julie (Ludivine Sagnier), Alice (Clotilde Hesme) and Ismael (Louis Garrel). Then Julie dies suddenly of a blood clot. Alice seems to move on but Louis can't. Then a handsome young gay man named Erwann (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet) falls in love with him. They have sex but is it what Ismael wants? The ending has a passionate kiss between Ismael and Erwann so I think they end up together.

I'm going to ignore some of the homophobic reviews this movies has gotten. It's really sad in this day and age that people get so upset by seeing guys hug and kiss (by the way there's no explicit sex or gratuitous nudity here--unless you count the quick look at Erwann's butt). I found the movie involving and beautiful to watch. Also the gay sex and characters are handled realistically without dragging in stereotypes or offensive remarks. Even better it shows the main character getting over his loss. Sure, it's with a guy. So? That shouldn't be such a big deal. The sequence where the two guys start kissing and undressing to have sex is easily the most erotic and moving part of the movie. All the acting is good and everybody can sing. The songs fit the story perfectly. To be honest they're unmemorable but none of them are bad. This seems to mirror (in structure) "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg". It's in three sections like that movie but, other than that, the movie is totally different. It might not mean anything but I noticed it. This was barely released in the US (the ending might have something to do with that) but I caught it on the Sundance channel and LOVED it. Well worth catching but if you're a homophobic jerk don't bother.

It is, of course, possible that I watched a different film to the previous posters, it is equally possible that the previous posters have never seen a Real musical or, indeed a Real French film. Suffice it to say that were it not for Brigitte Rouan and Chirara Mastroianni this would have been a total disaster. If ever two young people deserved each other those people are Ludo Sagnier and Lou Garrel - and if he would hit on Ludo off-screen and keep away from Valeria I'd be a much happier bunny. Christophe Honore has a penchant for sleaze and chances are he figured that the problem with his Ma Mere was that it needed saccharine music and lyrics to disguise the sleaze (Ma Mere, in case you missed it was the one where Lou Garrel got off with his ma, Isabelle Huppert and masturbated beside her corpse though on reflection I guess music and lyrics couldn't have done that much to save it) so this time around he laces the down-market sex with interchangeable melodies having only a beat rather than a tune and lyrics as banal as those Demy wrote for Les Paraplueis de Cherbourg. On the other hand there are some nice location shots of Paris but even here Honore can't resist having Sagnier check out a movie at the Brady, a cinema where Catherine Breillat films play and where Deep Throat played for a couple of years. Go if you must.