The popular French actor working in just about every film genre has been on the Croisette on a couple of occasions but as a filmmaker got his first taste when Sink or Swim (also known as Le grand bain) — a 2018 selection slotted as an Out of Competition item. Six years later we have L’amour Ouf (Beating Hearts) which was was packaged and advertised at last year’s Cannes and moved into production with a huge ensemble of players in May. Gilles Lellouche directs François Civil, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Malik Frikah, Mallory Wanecque, Alain Chabat, Anthony Bajon, Jean-Pascal Zadi, Benoît Poelvoorde, Vincent Lacoste, Élodie Bouchez, Karim Leklou and Raphaël Quenard star.
Gist: Based on the novel Jackie loves Johnser OK? by Neville Thompson, and written by Lellouche, Audrey Diwan, Ahmed Hamidi and Julien Lambroschini, this tells the story of an impossible love between two people from different social classes. It opens in a blue-collar region in northeastern France, as a girl from an upper-middle-class family and a boy from a modest background fall madly in love but drift apart; he eventually becomes a criminal and spends 12 years in prison.
Current temperature: In what was considered a weak year for French cinema entries, the 19th item in competition sank to the bottom of ours charts with 19 of our 20 critics weighing in for a film score average of 1.6.
