TRIBUTES AND RETROSPECTIVES

Isabelle Huppert, European

Loulou

Maurice Pialat
1980 - France - 1h50

Screenings : saturday 27 - 10:15 pm - Pathé - 1

Middle-class Nelly leaves her husband for Loulou, an outsider who seduces her with his non-conformity.

“Pialat would probably never have admitted it: all the same, his chronicle of an adulterous affair is a great political film. Nothing could be further removed from Maurice Pialat than the figure of the ‘committed' filmmaker. And yet, when you see Loulou again today, you hit the class struggle head on. Oh, there is nothing didactic about Pialat. No speeches, no caricatures. Just human flesh: bodies abandoned to love, boredom, alcohol and violence. Nelly (Isabelle Huppert, sovereign, who makes her mark in a role for which Miou-Miou and then Sylvia Kristel had been considered) moves from the arms (and the large flat) of André (Guy Marchand, whose pain is deeply moving) to those of Louis, known as Loulou (Depardieu, who came close to playing in La Gueule ouverte (The Mouth Agape), replaces Jacques Dutronc). To put it more bluntly, Loulou screws her over and over, and for a while that is all she can see. And then, again without the slightest discourse, with just a demented sense of editing (helped by Yann Dedet, after all), Pialat makes it clear that desire passes, that it must be nourished by something else if the relationship is to endure. Perhaps a child? Nelly gets pregnant. Then comes the big scene in the countryside at Loulou's mother's house, where the clash between two worlds that are difficult to reconcile is felt with almost intolerable acuity. Middle-class Nelly finds herself faced with a form of misery (Thomas, the jealous boy who wants to shoot everyone), and you can read the horror on her face. In the next shot, she has had an abortion. In pursuit of pleasure, Loulou finds nothing but emptiness. An agonising, dizzying emptiness. A fatal solitude embodied for a long time by Depardieu's heavy, youthful body. Loulou is a Polaroid of an unhappiness with life that hasn't aged a day.” (Olivier Nicklaus; Les Inrocks)�

CAST AND CREW

Cast : Isabelle Huppert, Gérard Depardieu, Guy Marchand, Humbert Balsan
Screenplay : Arlette Langmann, Maurice Pialat
Cinematography : Pierre-William Glenn, Jacques Loiseleux
Sound : Dominique Dalmasso, Gérard Loupias
Editing : Yann Dedet

Production : Action Films, Gaumont

French distributor : Capricci