Les amours imaginaires 2010

Stephen Holden, New York Times: The new movie confirms Mr. Dolan as a wildly talented, carelessly extravagant filmmaker nakedly in thrall to idols like Wong Kar-wai, Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, Bernardo Bertolucci and Pedro Almodovar. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: Though his results are sometimes raw, Dolan seems to be chronicling heartache as he discovers it. Indulge him. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: The film couples high comedy with spiritual solitude. That's not just a slo-mo stunt, it's a cockeyed triumph. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: A pretty decent film in its own right, and a remarkably good one if you consider the filmmaker turns 22 this month. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: It contains all the passion and drama that animated I Killed My Mother, but carried across with greater assurance and technique. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: All the dramatic protraction gets at both a heaviness of romantic desire and emotional viscosity. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: The triangulations of their desire are amusing but Dolan, as a director, is all attitude. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: [A] madly stylish Montreal-made delight... Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: Dolan is proving to be adept at and unafraid of teasing out the flaws of his characters, seemingly more concerned with whether they are interesting than whether an audience will like them. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: There are moments of heartbreaking beauty in it - although Dolan is still a work in progress. He'll get better - he's immensely talented - but he's not quite there yet. Read more

Richard Brody, New Yorker: Girl likes boy who likes boy (or maybe he doesn't) sounds like that recent reality-TV scenario, but there's very little reality at play in this hollowed-out, tricked-up Montreal-based drama. Read more

Bob Mondello, NPR: It's a bright, slight romp that seems to want to zero in on the pain and trauma of romantic obsession. If the filmmaker weren't having such fun mocking characters who fall hard while pretending not to, it might just be able to achieve that. Read more

V.A. Musetto, New York Post: "Heartbeats" looks good, and it has some funny dialogue. But there isn't enough to sustain the film's running time. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: Xavier Dolan is the new darling of Canadian cinema, and it's easy to see why. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Alas, although Heartbeats is quite lovely to look at, there isn't much going on after all. Read more

David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle: "Heartbeats" charts its own course. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Not too deep but oh so pretty, "Heartbeats" presents a hyper-stylized look at a love triangle, a sort of "Jules and Jim" for millennials. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Ultimately what makes "Heartbeats" tick is that it's less about love objects and more about friends who are stuck with each other, for better or worse. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: Quebec director Xavier Dolan's follow-up to his precocious art-house hit, I Killed My Mother, is a sweet and creamy, puffed-up dessert of a film. Read more

Ben Walters, Time Out: It can seem as if style is all in Dolan's films, but as well as revelling in its pleasures, they also dissect its limitations - sometimes without anaesthetic. Read more

Karina Longworth, Village Voice: 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. Read more

Stephanie Merry, Washington Post: Spends 100 minutes dispensing painful examples of how infatuation turns people into idiots. Read more