The similarities between the Joe Jonas video "Just in Love" and the independent film "For Lovers Only" come only from their shared inspiration in the cinema of the French New Wave, an executive for the video's production company said on Wednesday.
Kim Dellara, an executive producer at HSI Productions, told TheWrap that the video – in which Jonas and model Angele Sassy are seen in Paris in situations that are markedly similar in content and composition to scenes from the Polish brothers' ultra-low-budget film – is consistent with the past work of director Jaci Judelson, and that the similar situations "are universal in love stories of this genre."
She also provided a link to past work of Judelsons, and said that HSI had never heard of "For Lovers Only" before the controversy erupted.
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Dellara's statement, which she also posted on the company's Facebook page, reads:
"We've received considerable interest in the music video for Joe Jonas' single, 'Just in Love,' and it is apparently being compared to a film called 'For Lovers Only.' Until yesterday we had never heard of the independent film, but judging from the trailer online it is clear both the video and the film are set in Paris and shared inspiration from French 60s New Wave cinema. Each of the films includes situations that are universal in love stories of this genre.
"Jaci Judelson is known for a unique and large body of work that pre-dates this film by several years and this video is consistent with the style and content of her previous work.
"The concept for 'Just in Love' was inspired and driven by the lyrics of the song and by its director having lived in Paris for nearly 20 years."
On the Facebook page, the statement includes an additional sentence in its second paragraph, though the sentence was left out of the version that Dellara emailed to TheWrap: "We take exception to the notion that the video in any way infringed upon the content of the film in question."
In an interview with TheWrap on Tuesday, "For Lovers Only" writer and star Mark Polish said that the similarities between the video and the film felt like plagiarism, and dismissed the idea that both were simply inspired by the French New Wave.
"The French New Wave is a style, not the content," he said. "In their video, the content is a man and a woman meeting on the stairs, taking a boat ride, running through Paris, sitting in a bathtub … And so much of that is straight from our movie."
Rabid fans of "For Lovers Only" had posted dozens of comments on the HSI Facebook page demanding that the company acknowledge the similarities, and the company's statement did little to placate them.
"Claiming there are similarities is a massive understatement," said a typical comment. "For every scene in 'Just in Love,' there is an identical, original scene in 'For Lovers Only' … Let's man-up and take responsibility for the wrong we all know was committed and stop making excuses."
Added another "FLO" fan: "it took three days of thinking to come up with that back in the '60s all the French New Wave movies were basically the same. And that's your official statement. Congratulations."