3 Hearts Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.0

3 Hearts Blu-ray Movie Review

Murmur of the heart.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 1, 2015

An Affair to Remember, Leo McCarey’s more or less remake of his own 1939 Love Affair, is pretty much the very definition of a so-called “three hankie weeper,” what with its heart wrenching tale of two would be lovers who have an initial spark of attraction, only to have fate deal a nasty blow to their plans to meet in the future if each has in the meantime decided to forego their current relationships with other people. As my colleague Casey Broadwater pointed out in his An Affair to Remember Blu-ray review, the film hinges on a whole series of improbable events, to the point that those less inclined toward starry eyed romantic escapism may be ticking off the logical implausibilities that keep boy from (re)meeting girl. An Affair to Remember famously inspired and informed Nora Ephron’s Sleepless In Seattle, though as I mentioned in my Sleepless In Seattle Blu-ray review , the plot machinations keeping the would be lovers apart were perhaps less contrived and therefore more believable in that film than in either of the McCarey outings. Chalk up another film owing its genesis to McCarey’s ode to unconsummated love in Three Hearts, a rather odd 2014 French melodrama from co-writer and director Benoît Jacquot (Farewell, My Queen) which ups the angst ante by not just keeping would be lovers apart, but by having one partner up and romance the other partner’s sibling.

An Affair to Remember’s glossy patina was only reinforced by its lush score by Hugo Friedhofer, and its now iconic theme song by Harry Warren, Harold Adamson and McCarey himself, both of which received well deserved Oscar nominations. “Our Love Affair,” the soubriquet appended to the Warren-Adamson-McCarey theme, is one of the most memorable tunes from this era of film, and it’s a notable (sorry, no pun intended) departure from accepted harmonic tropes of the time, one which drifts through ephemeral and unusual chord changes while also staying firmly entrenched in a late fifties’ wash of outrageously beautiful melody. The first thing a lot of viewers (and/or listeners) are going to notice about Three Hearts is Bruno Coulais’ absolutely weird score, one which seems to suggest the film is going to be a thriller or mystery entry. A pulsing, dissonant barrage of sound greets the listener even before the film opens on harried tax accountant Marc Beaulieu (Benoît Poelvoorde) manically running into a provincial train station just late enough to see his ride home departing from the tracks. The whole underscore seems to suggest there’s a potent subtext to the panic, though Jacquot plays his cards fairly close to his vest both here and throughout the rest of the film.

When Marc wanders into one of the few establishments in the little burg that still seems to be open that late at night, he orders a mineral water and then notices a seemingly distracted woman who walks in and buys some cigarettes. She leaves without even making eye contact with him, but Marc runs out into the empty street and calls to her, asking where he might find a hotel. The woman, whose name is Sylvie (Charlotte Gainsborough), points out one right next to them, but then says there are more down the street, and the two engage in a halting conversation as they proceed. Three Hearts is already somewhat odd feeling, with seemingly picayune little elements like Marc thinking Sylvie is another woman he saw with a dog as he came out of the train station, or Jacquot’s patently odd pan away from their nascent conversation as a car passes by on the street, or (somewhat later in the film) the sudden appearance of a narrator who attempts to bridge some narrative gaps.

The two continue getting to know each other into the wee hours of the morning, with Marc more or less bragging about his romantic conquests (he seems to be irresistible to women) and Sylvie responding a bit stand-offishly, though it’s obvious she’s intrigued. In a tip of the hat to An Affair to Remember, the two agree to meet again in a few days to see if the attraction is real, and fate intervenes in the form of a business complication and resultant health scare for Marc that keeps him from meeting Sylvie in the incredibly beautiful Jardin des Tuileries. This is also one of the first places that some cynical viewers may be crying foul under their breaths, as unlike An Affair to Remember’s bygone era, we live in a time of easy outreach to folks to find out what’s going on with them. That aofrementioned health scare, a cardiac event, finally seems to offer a visual analog for Coulais’ sonic electrocardiogram score.

Jacquot sets up a putative surprise but then reveals it almost immediately with the introduction of antiques dealer Sophie (Chiara Mastroianni) who needs some tax advice from Marc. Sophie and Sylvie are of course sisters, though Jacquot wastes little time in offering up that tidbit to the audience, while still developing a considerable amount of tension from typically convoluted machinations which keep Marc from realizing their relationship. Marc and Sophie end up having a relationship (and more), building to the inevitable denouement of interrelationships which then leads into a somewhat more florid, almost Douglas Sirkian, presentation where Marc’s pursuit of Sylvie borders on the pathological.

Three Hearts has some standout sequences (one of the best is Sophie ditching her boyfriend in a movie theater while an action film plays out), but it’s fitfully engaging at best, never rising to the pure emotional impact that either An Affair to Remember or Sleepless in Seattle manage to attain. There’s a weird distance to a lot of this film, as if it’s Jacquot more in Todd Haynes mode, that is, refracting a Sirkian ambience rather than offering it up unfiltered, as it were. The film has uniformly wonderful performances (Mastroianni’s real life mom Catherine Deneuve portrays the sisters’ mom) and there’s a rather elegiac mood wafting through the piece, but this is more of an intellectual exercise that may preclude the need for any, let alone three, hankies.

3 Hearts Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Three Hearts is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cohen Film Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.40:1. Aside from a couple of rather oddly color graded sequences which bathe scenes in a kind of sickly green-yellow, Three Hearts offers a very natural looking palette. The image is sharp and well defined, offering excellent fine detail in the many close-ups and some typically ravishing views of the French countryside. The kind of casual homebound ambience of the piece means that there's never any real "wow" to the visuals in any meaningful sense, aside from a few exceptions like the lovely sequence in the Jardin des Tuileries (see screenshot 5). Some naturally lit interior and nighttime scenes have a bit of murk, but shadow detail is at least reasonable.

3 Hearts Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Why Cohen, a videophile label if ever there were one, keeps defaulting to lossy audio on its Blu-rays is a bit of a head scratcher, but once again Three Hearts has been authored to start the film with its Dolby Digital 5.1 track rather than the also included DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. Bruno Coulais' score, while almost intentionally anachronistic, is one of this film's more defining features, and it bristles through the surrounds like a combination of Bernard Herrmann and minimalists like Philip Glass. Occasional outdoor scenes offer a bit of ambient environmental sounds spilling through the surrounds, but this is a rather reserved track overall, one which boasts excellent fidelity but not a lot of stupendous surround effects.

3 Hearts Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:09)


• Director's Talk with Benoît Jacquot (1080p; 40:05) is a wide ranging discussion from the Film Society of Lincoln Center, including references to McCarey and the like. Charlotte Gainsborough is announced as being stuck in traffic at the beginning and shows up a few minutes into the proceedings.

3 Hearts Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

For a film which focuses on problems of the heart (in more ways than one), Three Hearts is a curiously unemotional experience. The acting is fantastic, and helps to buoy the film above an overly melodramatic and contrived premise. For the performances if not for the entire film, and with excellent technical merits and a good supplemental interview, Three Hearts comes Recommended.