“Beloved” comes with many deep and true spiritual messages

By GalaTView staff

Foto Courtesy

Beloved is a dense, complex, hard story that will first touch and then break your heart. Catherine Deneuve and Chiara Mastroianni play mother and daughter (as they are in real life) in a French soap opera of love. In the freewheeling Paris of the ‘60s, young Madeleine (Ludivine Sagnier)—who has gone from selling shoes to sleeping with men for money—falls for a handsome Czech doctor, Jaromil (Rasha Bukvic), who she soon marries and joins in Prague. A baby daughter is born, but Jaromil’s infidelities and the arrival of Russian tanks in Prague lead Madeleine back to France—though the love between them still burns. Thirty years later in London, we follow Madeleine’s daughter, Vera (Chiara Mastroianni), who has fallen in love with a musician (American actor Paul Schneider) who is incapable of devoting himself to her, while her ex (Honoré regular Louis Garrel) still pines for her. Meanwhile in Paris, a re-married Madeleine (Catherine Deneuve) has rekindled her love affair with Jaromil (director Milos Forman, in a rare acting role). Frequent Honoré collaborator Alex Beaupain (LOVE SONGS, DANS PARIS) composed the emotional, César-nominated score for this light-hearted but ultimately moving exploration of the changing nature of relationships. This was the latest film from French writer-director Christophe Honoré (LOVE SONGS, DANS PARIS).