You have all got it wrong SPOILERS!!!!

Apologies for this long post, but after seeing this film a few times, please bear with me as I think you have got it all wrong! The film isn't as simple as it seems.......:

The film is NOT about 'love' in a past life, etc. The film is about COPING MECHANISMS, what people do to cope in order to go on living. Carole's coping mechanism is to believe in an afterlife, dreams, etc. Therefore, supposedly many years ago she had observed the blurry figure a woman and one (or two) children in front of Notredame Cathedral in Paris. This photo was taken by Antoine's parents on a trip to Paris all those years ago and was hanging in their home, where a young Carol spotted it and unconciously 'saved' it in her memory.

Years later, out of the blue her true love Antoine bumps into Rose in a party and falls hard for her. Carol notices and acknowledges she saw it 'happening'. She takes note how Antoine goes and asks the DJ what song they are playing, which is 'Cafe de Flore'. For months afterwards, she observes how Antoine keeps playing that song (the scene in the car), and pertinently, the daughter says it's better than the 'It's youuuuu' song (which is actually a song by Sigur Ros. If you look at the video of this song by Sigur Ros you see that it is of some Down Syndrome children dressed as Angels (they are meant to represent angels in the video). One imagines somehow this is saved in Carole's brain too. Why? In case she NEEDS to use it later on. Already she is starting to build a COPING MECHANISM around her, building it up little by little.

Months after, Antoine has left her and is now living with Rose, the woman who has mesmerised him and who he now considers true or if possible second true love (notice how the Sigur Ros song with the 'It's Youoooo' lyrics goes up a notch in the scene where he finally meets her at the AA Meeting, as she's walking up to him with her hand outstretched?). From the moment he leaves Carole, she is haviing strange dreams and sleep walking. She sees a boy in the back of the car .....The Parallel story of Jacqueline and Laurent in Paris is all her imagination you see. Hence the parallel story is so 'unrealistic', as if a woman who only works 3 times a week washing hair in her neighbour's hairdresser could afford to pay for all those classes she has him take, AND the rent. Jacqueline seems to be PERFECT, the perfect mother, but perhaps a bit too strict with Laurent? This is Carole, in her uncouncious mind, preparing the ground for what is to come.

On the outside, Carole is all calm personified and so increcibly civilised, but on the inside she is DYING, truly traumatised (as anyone would be). When the daughters see her SILENT SCREAM whilst she is sleepwalking, they are truly shocked and worried. This is a woman who COULD kill herself, such is her anguish. Hence the older daughter tells her dad to go to her mums house to pick up something she had forgotten to take with her.....(she's worried about her, as she will now be on her own as it's Antoine's turn to have the girls over).

Then Antoine tells Carole, out of the blue, that he and Rose are getting married. You see Carole smiling, waving good bye to him as she drives off, Pretending everthing is fine......She really IS losiing him forever, so she drives and drives, and sees the flicker of the child behind the car again(Laurent but soon to be Antoine in her mind). She goes to the clairvoyant and the clairvoyant tells her what she wants to hear, in fact she doesn't even listen to what she says, in her head she KNOWS what it is that she NEEDS to know in order to forgive Antoine and to get on with her life. However, the clairvoyant also does a silent scream.....she is portraying what she psychically is feeling from Carole.....utter anguish....and Carole is horrified. So immediately she makes up the story (the Paris one) where in a past life she was Jacqueline, dumped by a callous unloving husband to their Down Syndrom child. She thinks that she was the good mother that loved her son so much, maybe too much, and then couldn't cope with his attachment to another little girl that she went and did something crazy and killed the three of them (Carole/Jacqueline, Antoine/Laurent, Rose/Vero) in a terrible suicidal/murderous car crash (also instigated by her feeling she had no way out as Laurent had been told not to go back to the nice school etc and Vero was going to go to a 'special' school, which she was dead against).......She, modern day Montreal soon to be ex-wife of who she thought was her true love, Antoine, HAS to believe all this, otherwise she would just go and kill herself because Antoine was the world to her, thought he felt the same (remember, 'your father and me, it's written in the stars' comment when the older daughter remarks he's smelling nice after as he leaves the house, presumably to his AA meeting). So Carole drives to Antoine after having a 'nightmare', (her mind is helping her heal herself, do you see), and she tells him to forgive her, and he tells her crying to 'no, forgive ME'. She embraces Rose too. She feels she had killed them, seperated them in a past life, they were just poor little Down Syndrome children, and she feels awful about it. This though is not what really happened, it's all in her head. However, Carole has now LET GO of Antoine and can no go on living.....without him.

The last scenes you see she has moved out into a roof -flat, she is 'open' now to new experiences, open sky, a new page has been turned. She attends Antoine and Rose's engagement party (or is it wedding), and his father is happy and hugs her, everyone is happy. As you can see, CAROLE has made everyone happy, her attitude has, her being so forgiving, giving them her blessing. The only way she COULD forgive was to picture herself as the 'bad guy in a past life', so to speak, the over-stressed loving mother who 'snapped'. Obviously, the woman is a saint for being so forgiving, but it's part of her 'new age' style coping mechanism.

Antoine's coping mechanism was music and alcohol.
Rose's was drugs and alcohol (and perhaps sex).
Carole's was 'alternative beliefs', etc. Past lives, etc. (New Age)

Once I realised it was all in Carole's head (hence the last frame in the film is of the camera zooming into the blurry picture of the Cathedral with these figures waving at the tourist boat).....for the audience to realise that a young Carole had seen that photo and memorised it, and took it out of her unconcious when she most needed it. Indeed, there is a photo of Young Carole and Young Antoine holding up an album cover and in the back ground wall is the Cathedral photograph). She needed those blurry figures in the photo, and her New Age beliefs, to let Antoine go and let him be happy, and for her not to kill herself, for her to be ABLE to understand why Antoine would fall for another woman. The truth is that it seemed to me that Antoine and Rose's relationship was just very sexual, and who was to say they would have actually lasted after the initial excitement, as Carole's friend believed. I also really doubted that he wouldn't have been unfaithfull a million times, considering his line of work as DJ's are famous for putting it about. Carole's attitude at first was as if she didn't mind 'flings', hence that's why it may explain why she thought he would come back to her, as if he had slept around before. The way he looked at Rose when he first saw her, with his wife there and everything, was just so out of order, so sleazy, although he was PRETENDING not to like Rose, then going to the DJ to ask for the name of the song he was playing....well, to me it was obvious the guy had put it about quite a bit....although maybe in his head he thought he was still inlove with Carole (before Rose came along, of course).

There was also a MASSIVE clue the director gave us that it was all in Carole's head. The Cafe de Flore song that is played througout (in different modes, the accordion version, the modern funky version etc), was not recorded until much later. If you observe, in the Paris story there is a scene or two where you see the Cafe De Flore LP by Matthew Herbert (Doctor Rokkit)......this is exactly the same LP that you briefly see once in Antoine's collection (ie, Modern Montreal)......BUT the LP wasn't even recorded until the the 90s or 2000s or so, which does not 'add up' time wise to the 'past life' story as the Paris story must have been set in the 50s or at most the early 60s. The director, who was a DJ himself in the past, and who is reknown for his love of music, would NOT have than that mistake, unless it was on purpose: a 'clue' to the audience. I for one love that he hasn't spelled it all out.

Finally, it seems I am in the right as even the Director himself has said it is all in Carole's head. I just found this interview:

http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/heart-and-soul-20120419-1x8 5k.html

BTW, I absolutely LOVED the film.....poor Carole though! I guess better that (her tricking herself) than drugs and alcohol though! The only problem I had with the film was that I didn't think that Young Antoine (which was played by the Director's son, who was also in Crazy) looked anything like Older Antoine. All the actors were excellent though, so all is forgiven!

Once more, sorry for the long post. I suggest you need to see this film at least 2 or 3 times to really 'get' it. There are so many details you ignore first time around.