Heartbeats/Les Amours Imaginaires

Directed by Xavier Dolan. Starring Monia Chokri, Niels Schneider, Xavier Dolan, Anne Dorval 16 cert, Screen, Dublin, 100 min

WE SHOULD always pause before reaching for that tired old phrase “style over substance”.

Plenty of great films have thrived on surface gloss. Still, such cheap shots are hard to avoid when assessing a film like Xavier Dolan's delicious, tricksy, somewhat empty Heartbeats.The French-Canadian director of I Killed My Motheruses the broadest shades in the cinematic palette to tell a relatively simple story about two guys and a girl. The real love affair here, though, is an onanistic one. The film is so enamoured of its own clever-clever aesthetic – catch all the slow-motion, blaring music and quasi-verité interviews – that no other liaison gets a decent look-in.

The object of desire is supposed to be young Nicolas (Niels Schneider). Touching down in Montreal after a spell doing something exotic, he fast becomes an object of desire for both Marie (Monia Chokri) and Francis (Dolan).

Nicolas’s desires and motives remain something of a mystery. The film is more concerned with his influence on others than with the inner workings of his (undoubtedly beautiful) mind. Though beds are shared and simmering glances are exchanged, bodily fluids remain, for much of the picture’s duration, contained within their respective glands.

You might argue that nothing much happens in Heartbeats. But Dolan does have a formidable talent for reworking earlier directors' stylistic flourishes to his own ends. The reminders of Jules and Jim are plain to see. Little touches of Godard flit by. The decadent ambience of the film leans towards early work by Pedro Almodóvar. One can even – at a stretch – see something of When Harry Met Sally . . .in the opening interviews with young people who have suffered romantic disappointments.

Though there's nothing much at the picture's heart, the classy embellishments lend the piece an undeniable charm. Watching Heartbeatsis akin to guzzling some big fruity smoothy – too much raspberry with too much kiwi – that tantalises the taste buds as it renders the drinker ever so slightly nauseous. There are worse ways of spending an evening.