Heartbeats received generally positive reviews, currently holding a 74% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes; the consensus states: "An art film to the max, Heartbeats' intriguing and appealing premise is sometimes buried by director Xavier Dolan's filmmaking flourishes."[4] On Metacritic, which uses an average of critics' reviews, the film has a 70/100, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[5] A New York Times critic wrote that compared to Dolan's first film Heartbeats "takes style even more seriously, both in its allusive execution–he draws giddily from things like the Nouvelle Vague and Wong Kar-wai–and its subject: self-fashioning and teasing, unfulfilled desire."[6]