Hearts Beat Loud

Some two decades ago, the decline of vinyl was opined in High Fideli­ty and Empire Records. In 2018, with the vinyl indus­try in the grips of a ten­ta­tive resur­gence, one might ques­tion the need for anoth­er film cen­tred around a strug­gling record store run by a grumpy white man, much less one locat­ed in the increas­ing­ly gen­tri­fied hip­ster haven of Brook­lyn, New York. Lucky for all of us, then, that Brett Haley’s Hearts Beat Loud is so much more than that.

Ex-musi­cian Frank Fish­er (the effort­less­ly Nick Offer­man) runs a record store on the brink of clo­sure in Red Hook, where rent hikes mean his beloved shop’s days are num­bered. Between car­ing for his elder­ly but inde­pen­dent moth­er (Blythe Dan­ner) and rais­ing his tal­ent­ed, respon­si­ble daugh­ter Sam (Kiersey Clemons) who’s gear­ing up to move to Cal­i­for­nia for col­lege, he’s at a loose end. After a song the father-daugh­ter team record dur­ing a ​‘jam sesh’ ends up being recog­nised by music indus­try bods, Frank sees it as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to offi­cial­ly start a band with Sam – but she’s not so sure it’s a good idea. In the wrong hands it’s a sto­ry that could have felt twee or aching­ly pre­ten­tious, but instead, dri­ven by a charm­ing cast, Heart Beats Loud feels won­der­ful­ly warm and inclusive.

The clue might be in the name, but this is a love sto­ry, all told. The blos­som­ing rela­tion­ship between Sam and her girl­friend Rose (Sasha Lane) is the most obvi­ous indi­ca­tion of this, but on a more gran­u­lar lev­el, Haley also paints a ten­der por­trait of the rela­tion­ship between a sin­gle father and his teenage daugh­ter. In a more abstract sense, Hearts Beat Loud is about a pure love of music. Frank and Sam both seem hap­pi­est when they’re writ­ing songs togeth­er, but the film also demon­strates how music con­nects peo­ple, be it through karaōke (Toni Col­lette, play­ing Frank’s land­lord, gives a rous­ing per­for­mance of Chairlift’s ​‘Bruis­es’) or sim­ply shar­ing album recommendations.

With a stel­lar sound­track includ­ing Mit­s­ki and Songs: Ohia, as well as some excel­lent orig­i­nal songs writ­ten by Kee­gan DeWitt and per­formed by the excep­tion­al­ly tal­ent­ed Clemons and Offer­man, it’s a rare treat to find a film with the earnest­ness of Hearts Beat Loud. It’s also unusu­al (and very wel­come) to see a same-sex rela­tion­ship por­trayed with as much care as Sam and Rose’s, who are allowed to exist with­out any of the usu­al mis­ery that besets LGBTQ love sto­ries on screen. Haley’s film feels com­fort­ably famil­iar in its com­ing-of-age dynam­ic, but its play­ful­ness, lack of pre­tence, and smart cast­ing ele­vate it from for­get­table indie com­e­dy fair into a gen­uine delight.