L’Amour Ouf: third production by Gilles Lellouche
The project took many years to come to fruition. And the story is beautiful: one day, Benoît Poelvoorde (who also stars in the film) offers Gilles Lellouche the novel Jakie loves Johnser, okay? by Irish author Neville Thompson, and it’s a revelation: he wants to make a film of it. It was finally in 2024 that it was presented in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. This is his third hit after that Narco AND The Big Bath.
The story takes place over several years in northern France. That’s where Clotario lives, a little guy, raised in a large family, who seems to have no other interest than doing what he wants, and hitting everything that moves. Until the day he meets Jacqueline (whom he calls “Jackie”), a young girl who has just arrived at the local high school. Very quickly, it was love at first sight, a real “ugh love” between them. Until a robbery goes wrong and Clotaire is sentenced to ten years in prison.
A great promise of cinema
The first hour of Ugh love it is a pure delight. Gilles Lellouche lets the horses go, his camera turns in all directions, invokes the cinema of Scorsese, of De Palma, to film the gangs, an absolutely masterful shootout, and above all the love at first sight between Clotario and Jackie. We might criticize him for wanting to do too much, but he is so generous and exudes so much admiration for the cinema he loves, that it would be difficult to deny our pleasure. The director manages to capture a tumultuous youth with an energy that almost resembles a modern version of it History of the West Side (also with incursions of musical dance). The approach is fresh and the direction is full of cinematic aggression that we can only admire.
However, as the film progresses, it struggles to maintain this initial momentum. The transition to adult life, although supported by the solid talents of François Civil and Adèle Exarchopoulos, seems to lose its initial dynamism. The screenplay, by attempting to weave together too many threads – from gangster stories to tragic family dramas – dilutes the emotional intensity established at the beginning. The young Mallory Wanecque and Malik Frilah (a real revelation), who play Jackie and Clotaire as teenagers, end up missing. This period of youth, violent and melancholic, seems to be the one in which Gilles Lellouche expresses himself best.
The experience becomes progressively more laborious, with a staging that, although technically impressive, becomes at times too insistent, thus losing the intimate thread with its characters. The film, in trying to do too much, ends up eclipsing its own strengths, leaving the viewer with the sense of a work that, while generous in its scope, sometimes lacks the subtlety necessary to truly touch. The soundtrack, full of new wave hits, is initially uplifting, but ends up sounding artificial, as if trying to compensate for the lack of emotion coming from the characters themselves.
Ugh love starts out as a promising fireworks display, but fails to keep that flame alive until the end. However, it is impossible to remain indifferent to it.
The film is expected in theaters next October.
Source: Cine Serie
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