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'Love Songs'

Rating:

BY JAN STUART | jan.stuart@newsday.com

March 19, 2008

French movie musicals are an oxymoron, notwithstanding the luxuriantly camp collaborations of "Umbrellas of Cherbourg" director Jacques Demy and composer Michel Legrand back in the '60s. Christophe Honoré's flat-footed "Love Songs" does little to change that Yankee-centric impression.

Louis Garrel gives a performance of breathtaking narcissism as Ismael, a romantically elastic young Parisian negotiating the complications of a triangular relationship with his live-in girlfriend Julie (Ludivine Sagnier) and his work colleague Alice (Clotilde Hesme).

When sudden tragedy removes Julie from the equation, Ismael begins to realign his personal life in full view of Julie's tight-knit family (including a brooding Chiara Mastroianni as Julie's protective sister, Jeanne). At the heart of this bumpy transition is Erwann (Gregoire Leprince-Ringuet), a lovestruck student who trails Ismael about like a puppy.

Aided by a pretty cast, Honoré creates a distinct urban planet of unconventional domesticity and fluid sexuality that harks back to the Antoine Doinel comedies of Francois Truffaut.

The planet grinds to a halt whenever anyone breaks into one of the film's doughy songs by Alex Beaupain, which succeed in reducing the efficiently delineated characters to the same whiny denominator.

For a film roiling with so much turmoil of the heart, "Love Songs" generates dismayingly little emotional frisson. The streets of Paris make multiple supporting appearances, and they look grand.

LOVE SONGS (unrated). The ever-evolving love life of a young Parisian magazine editor, set to anesthetizing musical numbers by Alex Beaupain. Christophe Honoré's busy romantic drama has movement but no fizz, despite a game cast and the assertive mugging of Louis Garrel in the lead. 1:35 (adult themes, brief nudity). In French with English subtitles.

At Paris Theater, IFC Center, Manhattan.