Loulou

Given the exhaustive and thoughtful review by the previous poster, I won't be redundant. This movie contains one of the best lines I've ever heard: As Nelly rides away with LouLou on his motorcycle, Andre poutfully spouts (rough english) "But you can't discuss books with him!"; Nelly replies "I don't discuss books, I read them!".

Priceless.

It might seem crude to suggest that "Loulou" was made for the single purpose of getting Gerard Depardieu and Isabelle Huppert, two of the biggest stars of the French film industry then (and now), in bed together; on the other hand, it's hard to think of any other reason for making it (or seeing it). They do share a strong chemistry, and Huppert may never have looked better, but their characters, like all the others, lack interest and depth: all they do is eat, drink, argue and screw, in no particular order. The script is void (there is not a shred of plot, and barely any dramatic conflict, in this 105-minute movie), and the direction is totally pedestrian. *1/2 out of 4.

Bored, restless housewife Isabelle Huppert leaves her brutish husband for an overage juvenile delinquent, played by Gerard Depardieu in one of the roles that made him an unlikely international sex symbol. The film is an uninhibited look at the seamier side of romantic Paris, but may be altogether too dark for its own good, and not only in terms of lighting: the script itself is often unforgivably vague. A talented cast gives the largely improvised non-story an almost documentary feel, but with no sympathetic characters (and with a distracting lack of motivation) the film rambles on interminably in no particular direction. In the end it amounts to little more than just another exercise in urban spiritual malaise, complete with stock footage of the cuckold husband blowing a lonely late-night saxophone in his empty apartment, with the TV flickering silently in the background. Not even the most opaque European art-house mood piece can support that kind of cliché.

Well-made but basically dreary low-life melodrama which, according to the accompanying interview with lead Isabelle Huppert, writer/director Pialat infused with a good deal of autobiographical detail; given the mainly unsympathetic characters involved, it doesn't do him any compliments - and he does seem to have been a troubled man, as Huppert also says that Pialat often disappeared for days on end during the shoot!

The acting is uniformly excellent, however; despite their relatively young age, Huppert and co-star Gerard Depardieu (as the title character!) were already at the forefront of modern French stars - a status which, with varying degrees of success, they both still hold to this day.

I have 3 more of Pialat's films in my "VHS To Watch" pile, albeit all in French without English Subtitles; due to this fact but also LOULOU'S oppressive realism - in spite of its undeniable artistic merit - I can't say that I'm in any particular hurry to check them out now...

Depardieu plays convincingly (and with charm) the bum-leech-delinquent of the title; he is also the "heartthrob" (?) of the film, while Huppert is equally fine as Nelly, the middle class woman who falls in love with him. I think Pialat is pointing out the complexity and sometimes irrationality of human behavior, while (a bit like Pasolini) he also tries to look at the humane and tender side of the scoundrels. (5/10)