Loulou

Heads up, this film is very, very French. LouLou is the kind of romantic drama that you've seen before - mood swings, bouts of ineffectual slap-fighting, intermittent reconciliation, busy urban street scenes, sex, the debate between stable and boring vs. unpredictable and exciting. Perhaps the volatile romantic interactions were a bit more original in 1980, but years down the line it seems that virtually every modern love story is heavy on screaming matches and irrational decision making. The performances are fine, the directing is fine; it's hard to pick out aspects of the film that are explicit failures in execution, but thematically it feels hollow and tired. I guess the concepts of abortion and a woman having multiple lovers don't hit like they used to. (2.5/5)

1001 movies to see before you die. Interesting film showing drama of French relationships, but it was a bit rough going. It was on CRI.

Even though understanding it was a film made almost 4 decades ago, it had had everything I dislike about French Cinema inside.

There is a great deal more going on in this classic Maurice Pialat film. Everything from marriage, sexuality, misogyny, human cruelty, class struggles to the mysteries/complexities of erotic desire are explored far more deeply than you realize as Loulou unspools. But, what really pushes this film to a whole new level is the way Pialat marries the chemistry between his two leading actors to a distinctive style of narrative that flows around like a drunk trying to find the way home.

Brilliant character study featuring brilliantly naturalistic performances by two of the most important actors from French cinema working for one of its most unique filmmakers. It all works beautifully.

Pialat confidently allows his characters to be who they are without embellishment or misplaced sentimentality. He pulls us into their lives and we must accept them as they are. This is confrontational cinema in the vain of Cassavetes. The reality of the characters is so vivid as to make it almost disturbing, and it doesn't help that Isabelle Huppert and Gerard Depardieu are extremely flexible and intuitive actors. The reality is almost too much, but you can't help admiring the audacity of it, the sheer love of unbiased and unfettered truth seeking.

Una película muy interesante porque no está atada a un guión estrictamente narrativo y con desarrollo convencional de una trama. Explora el amplio terreno de las relaciones humanas, enfocándose en el aspecto sexual/emotivo, las idas y venidas de una pareja siempre al borde de la ruptura, viviendo un amorío en una ciudad que es de Francia, pero podría ser cualquiera en el mundo moderno. Lo que inquieta de los personajes es que parecen vivir más allá de las convenciones o lo que impone el mundo moderno, no siguen el mismo ritmo que el resto de las personas y eso mantiene el interés por lo que sucederá con ellos. La trama se desarrolla como una única secuencia más que como una línea escalonada que se va tensionando, lo que le agrega una dosis de realismo muy potente (¿acaso la vida no es una gran secuencia más que una premeditada serie de "pulsos dramáticos"?). Las actuaciones son fenomenales, y esto se debe a que los diferentes personajes se amoldan perfectamente al tono elegido por el director Maurice Pialat.

Loulou is the story about the a lady named Nelly (Isabelle Hubbert) falls in love with the big boned underclass thug Loulou (Gérard Depardieu) through sexual intercourse and no so much trough feeling, sense or sensibility. To bad it doesn't work as it sounds. It's long, it's simply boring and irrelevant. Thumbs down.

An interesting and clearly notable film that obviously means more to the academy for its importance that it does watching it now.

A married woman falls for one of those guys that likes to have sex all of the time but never bothers do adult things like find a job. This is one of those movies that's done in that realistic style so, there is no plot to follow. All the director ask is that you sit there and watch. The performances in it are good in that they are realistic and it feels like I'm watching real people but, to be perfectly honest, these are people I have no interest in. Near the end of it, I couldn't even be bothered to pay attention to what was going on on screen.