Beloved: Exploration of 21st-Century Love

Writer/director Christophe Honore and composer Alex Beaupain continue to reinvent the movie musical with "Beloved," a companion piece to their "Love Songs" (2008). No one else in the world is doing what they're doing. They may not be great artists, but they are certainly good ones. When they're at their best, they produce cinema moments that are nothing short of sublime.

In "Beloved" there also is the added delight of seeing the real-life mother-and-daughter team of Catherine Deneuve and Chiara Mastroianni (shown here) on screen together for what I think is the first time -- and playing a mother and daughter! Masterful casting.

One can't help but think of Marcello Mastroianni either (Chiara's late father), who seems to be lurking around every corner -- and through him, of course, Federico Fellini. And it gets better. The man playing Chiara's father is none other than Milos Forman. Yes, THE Milos Forman ("Amadeus"). The casting is almost too inspired. It threatens to drown the film in nostalgia for the halcyon days of European cinema.

Representing young Europe are, in addition to Mastroianni, Louis Garrel and Ludivine Sagnier. Sagnier plays the main character in her youth: a prostitute in 1960s Paris who falls in love with and marries a Czech doctor. In her later years, she's played by a still-randy Deneuve. Forman (who in real life is Czech) plays the Czech doctor in his later years. Mastroianni plays their daughter.

Garrel plays Mastroianni's on-and-off boyfriend.

Moving things in a really different direction (and bringing America into the mix) is an American played by Paul Schneider, a gay man who has a boundary-breaking hard-to-define romance of sorts with Mastroianni.

I know what you're thinking: too many characters. It's true. The film does get overblown with confusing inter-relationships, and I haven't even explained all of them. The film is also not edited well and too long (2 hours and 10 minutes).

"Beloved" is a musical kaleidoscope of love. At times, it's a sloppy mess. But at times it beautifully captures 21st-century love, in all its shape-shifting glory. Name one interesting person in a big city today who has a standard relationship that perfectly fits into the box of marital fidelity or even sexual orientation. I'm a gay man, and my greatest loves in the 21st century have been with either single straight men or married straight women. Complexities abound.

As I was just remarking in a review of Oliver Stone's "Savages," the human species is evolving at lightning speed. We're reinventing love in a fearless and exhilarating way. Honore revels in this and throws us into the euphoric thrum of it all. But it's not all glee. One character commits suicide. The breakdown of sexual orientation and bourgeois forms of relationship comes at a price. It can be profoundly disconcerting. When you love someone outside your sexual orientation, you go home alone most of the time -- both of you. Both of you know that you're loved, but you don't have each other to hold onto in bed.

Making it even more complicated, the person who IS in your bed knows your real love is someone else. Radical forms of love are not for the weak.

It is flawed, but "Beloved" is also a wonder: a joyful but conflicted embrace of the future.

Did I mention the music of "Beloved"? At times it is exquisite.