Life is music

Rating: 6/10 (15 February 2007)

High fidelity tells the story of Rob Gordon (John Cusack), a record store owner whom his girlfriend has just dumped. Rob is reassessing his top 5 break ups to figure out why it always goes wrong.
The film's central place is the record store Championship vinyl; music geek Dick and annoying little prick Barry (the very well casted Tod Louiso and Jack Black) rule the place. Many of the scenes here are hilarious (especially when the great Tim Robbins appears) and form the heart of the film. The setting is really good, a pretty dirty shop at the edge of town, Rob and his employees are everything but commercially minded, filling the days with seemingly useless discussions (but we all know that useless discussions are very important), annoying customers and arguing  just lovely. Gradually we learn about Rob's former break ups and how he moves on in his relationship with Laura.
There's no great cinematography here, no extraordinary directing or camera-work, none of that, just a very honest, enthusiastic narrating about a guy living the life and everything that goes along with it. Love, rejection, pain, happiness,  with characters which many of us will relate to, normal people in all there shortcomings, no heroes. As it's main characters, the film as well suffers from shortcomings, e.g. the part after Laura's father died, is not adding anything and there is no prominent role for music, at least not enough, truly a mistake seen the setting of the film and Rob's life which evolves around pop music.
But it's hard not to sympathize with the characters and hence to like the film, it doesn't pretend to be more than what it is, I'd even say it wouldn't be as good as it is if it was made less spontaneous. The story holds a lot of truth and is lovingly told; it's warm, it's funny and it's damn real.
No great cinema but good for the heart.