We saw “L’amour ouf” at the Cannes Film Festival and fell in love at first sight

Gilles Lellouche returns to the Croisette six years later The big bathroom with a film that mixes genres and dissects love. An ambitious proposal supported, in particular, by Adèle Exarchopoulos, François Civil, Raphaël Quenard and two very promising young actors.

“The heart beats 100,000 times a day. (…) That’s four billion times in a lifetime.” It is 18,000 during the almost three hours of ugh love. This movie is the story ofA love true, passionate, explosive, which lasts about ten years. A complex relationship, interpreted by actor and director Gilles Lellouche. Approved for The big bathroom in 2018, he returns to the Croisette with an ambitious and generous film, selected in the Official Competition. A sincere and daring project, which needs a budget of 35.7 million euros – one of the most expensive French films of 2024. It deserves a Palme d’Or ?

The beginner’s mistake

U movie manages to surprise us from the first minutes. We wait for lightning, we are given strikes. ugh love start strong. It is dark, violent, destabilizing. We hear blows, we see blood. And we tell ourselves that this work is not a romantic comedy like the others. The opening scene, particularly striking, immediately captures our attention and instantly projects us into its story. A story set in the 1980s and it brilliantly captures its electric atmosphere with an outstanding soundtrack and brilliant sets and costumes.

If Gilles Lellouche has a gift to make (re)live this era of Cures, vinyls, perfect covers of pins and boom, his scenario is much less convincing. A brilliant and reckless teenager who falls in love bad boy High school ? There is a feeling of déjà vu. Also, it’s hard to get attached to these characters who sometimes fall into cliches, make a series of bad choices and quickly become detestable.

However, the relationships between these protagonists are much more fair and manage to touch us. We love the father-daughter scenes played by Alain Chabat (The city of fear) and the young (and excellent) Mallory Wanecque (The worst), and we can’t just recognize it in the passionate and teenage romance between Jackie and Clotaire (played by Malik Frikah who is as brilliant as his partner).

Of course, the bet is not risky – we all have a childhood lover who left us many memories – but we must recognize that the way in which the director tells is very successful. We (re)live this awkward and stimulating idyll, these eye contact that they lack discretion, these giggles, this excitement at the first ring of the telephone, riding a motorbike, swimming in the summer and this feeling of tasting freedom for the first time.

A serious student, Jackie goes all out with her new boyfriend. But little by little, Clotaire is no longer satisfied with skipping classes and falls into delinquency. He commits theft. Learn to use weapons. It makes easy money. And the violence ramps up a notch… until it hits too many times. Sentenced to 12 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, the teenager slowly descends into hell and, against his will, drags his girlfriend with him. Upon his release from prison, the young man (today played by François Civil) intends to recover all the lost time with his childhood sweetheart (played by Adèle Exarchopoulos) who is now married.

By the time La La Land encounter Reservoir Dogs

If ugh love suffers from a lack of originality in his writing, he manages to make up for it in many aspects. First, the casting is as ambitious as it is outstanding. Whether it’s main or secondary roles, we find many well-known faces of French cinema including Adèle Exarchopoulos (unveiled at Cannes with Adele’s life in 2013 and awarded this year with a César for I will always see your faces), François Civile (BAC Nord), the recently Caesarized Raphaël Quenard (Dog of the break), Karim Leklou (Vincent must die), Vincent Lacoste (who received the César for best supporting actor in 2022 for Lost illusions), Jean-Pascal Zadi (César for the Most Promising Male in 2020 for Simply black) or even Élodie Bouchez (double caesarean, in 1995 and 1998). And we can only salute the performance of two very promising young actors: Mallory Wanecque and Malik Frikah.

Behind the camera, Gilles Lellouche is like his actors. It connects interesting propositions, from passages with clean aesthetics worthy of a music video to sensory close-ups full of poetry. He also moves to constantly break the rhythm, as if to reinforce this opposition between love and violence, which here seem intrinsically linked.

The filmmaker mixes the genres, taking turns from romantic comedy to action cinema and gangster films – forgetting, however, his promise of a musical comedy announced a few months ago. It is as if La La Land encounter Reservoir Dogs. They are not Damien Chazelle or Quentin Tarantino who want, but the French director dares and proposes.

There are some quirks, but we are pleased to discover a film full of sincerity. Lellouche gives us a very intimate work, he even manages to transcribe on the screen scenarios that we have imagined again and again in our heads. Despite a duration of almost three hours, ugh love captivates us from beginning to end, alternating funny, dark, violent and touching sequences.

We strongly doubt it will win the Palme d’Or – its competitors have offered more mature and original works – but it is a powerful and unique film. When the end credits roll, we just want to rush to the next session to (relive) this emotional roller coaster.