{"id":19535,"date":"2015-07-28T09:00:17","date_gmt":"2015-07-28T16:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qgp.ykq.mybluehost.me\/cinephiled\/?p=19535"},"modified":"2015-07-28T11:10:40","modified_gmt":"2015-07-28T18:10:40","slug":"videophiled-3-hearts-france-animated-justice-league-gods-monsters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinephiled.com\/videophiled-3-hearts-france-animated-justice-league-gods-monsters\/","title":{"rendered":"Videophiled: ‘3 Hearts’ from France and the animated ‘Justice League: Gods and Monsters’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"3Hearts\"3 Hearts<\/i><\/b> (Cohen, Blu-ray, DVD) does indeed refer to a romantic triangle, but this French drama from Benoit Jacquot is neither lurid nor lascivious. Marc (Beno\u00eet Poelvoorde), a middle-aged tax auditor, is a sensitive schlub whose innate compassion and respect apparently wins over attractive younger women. He meets Sylvie (Charlotte Gainsbourg) in a chance meeting on the streets of her hometown, talking all night and making plans to meet in Paris. When fate intervenes (by way of one of those An Affair to Remember<\/i> vows to meet again at a certain place and time but not exchange any personal information), she reunites with her ex and moves to the U.S. and her sister Sophie (Chiara Mastroianni), who has become an emotional wreck in the separation, goes in search of tax advice. Good Samaritan Marc helps out, asks her on a date (he has no idea they’re related), and before you know it Sylvie is on her way back for the wedding and that initial attraction fires up again, which is actually harder on Sylvie than on Marc. She feels no devotion to her boyfriend back in the U.S.\u2014it was a failing relationship before they even left France\u2014but she can’t bear the thought of hurting her sister.<\/p>\n

There are plenty of contrivances that will distract the logically-minded (really, after all that time in Sophie’s family home, you never noticed that picture of Sylvie on the wall of family photos?) but the main problem is that there’s no spark between Poelvoorde, whose Marc is a dull workaholic with a hangdog face and a decided lack of energy, and Gainsbourg, whose emotions churn like shockwaves through her very being as Sylvie. Love at first sight is a lovely story and Marc does pick up her spirits as they wander her city at night but it’s hard to see any real passion in their interactions. Mastroianni’s much more neurotic sister is a little less mysterious\u2014she seems a little emotionally fragile and Marc is a stable presence as well as devoted partner\u2014but you have to take the swoony romance turned obsessive passion on sheer faith.<\/p>\n

Jacquot doesn’t play this as high melodrama. It’s more of a down-to-earth tragedy: love at first sight delayed, the restless heart of a man who reconnects with his first love, the torment of an unhappily married woman in love with her sister’s husband. Jacquot tries to make it all very relatable with well-observed scenes of the sisters at home with their mother (played by Mastroianni’s real life mom, Catherine Deneuve, who has little to do but is magnificent doing it nonetheless) and Marc and Sophie in the lived-in comfort of domestic happiness. I see a trace of Truffaut in the way Jacquot handles his relationships, focusing on the everyday intimacy and the goodness in characters doing destructive things, but he doesn’t give them deep enough inner lives to make their tragedy matter.<\/p>\n

Blu-ray and DVD, in French with English subtitles, with a 40-minutes Q&A with the director at a screening at Lincoln Center (he speaks in French, a translator provides the English).<\/p>\n

\"JUsticeGods\"Justice League: Gods & Monsters<\/i><\/b> (Warner, Blu-ray, DVD, Digital HD), the latest DC Universe Original Animation Feature, is also the first actual original. Where others have been adapted from notable story arcs and stand-alone graphic novels published in the past few decades, this alternate reality superhero story was written by Bruce Timm (the godfather of the DC animated rebirth that began with the 1990s Batman: The Animated Series<\/i>) and Alan Burnett as an original screenplay. In this take, Superman (voiced by Benjamin Bratt) is the son of Zod, Batman (Michael C. Hall) is actually a medical vampire born of Man-Bat, and Wonder Woman (Tamara Taylor) is not an Amazon but a New God.<\/p>\n

This is a cruel, violent universe, DC’s version of Star Trek<\/i>‘s “Mirror, Mirror,” where the superheroes have developed as almost militaristic figures who don’t have any qualms about killing their enemies, and Lex Luthor is no villain but a voice of caution against the unrestrained power of these heroes, who are not held in check or held responsible for any of their actions. They make their own rules and the American government tends to look the other way, perhaps for fear that they will turn. At least until the most prominent scientists in the country are murdered and the evidence points back at the three heroes whose brand of justice is no less brutal. The plotting is a little lazy for a conspiracy thriller (the plan depends on no witnesses or forensic investigations) but the creative intricacy of the reworking of familiar characters and backstories is impressive and there are references aplenty for aficionados of classic DC Comics (who would have thought “The Metal Men” would end up significant players in one of these films?).<\/p>\n