Canción De Amor

“You’d think people have had enough of silly love songs / But I look around me and I see it isn’t so”, sang Paul McCartney. And those lyrics seem to guide Karin Idelson’s camera in this exploration of “popular applications” of romantic songs, to put a word on it. Cumbia, soft-rock, reggaeton, pop, boleros, catchy hits from the 1980s and even before that (the category an FM station labelled as “oldies but goodies”): the music is in the air in the city, and Canción de amor catches it where it has become so natural than we hardly notice it, but mostly in the most hidden and crazy places. Huge choirs singing Queen songs, restaurant performers, Elvis impersonators, the radio coming out of the back seat of a taxi, background music in shopping malls or hourly hotels, and a long etcetera recorded with undisguised virtuosity, all parade through this curious and playful documentary that proves Sir Paul right: the world is full of silly love songs, and there’s nothing wrong with that.