Loulou (1980)

What a waste of my time!!!

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

What is the attraction for a bourgeois woman that makes her leave her world in exchange of an uncertain future? Boredom, plain and simple, or so it seems what makes Nelly, a woman who has a good life with Andre, her husband, an advertising executive, throw all away when she meets Loulou. He is a petty criminal living a marginal life, but who brings a new excitement to the life of this Parisian woman.One has seen this theme exploited before. Yet, director Maurice Pialat spun a different angle in a relationship between two people from opposite sides of society. The film is more about style than substance, as one is taken to the world of Loulou, a man that has not amounted to much, yet, he has a magnetic effect on Nelly. It is basically a story in which Nelly awakens to sensual situations she never felt with Andre. The film gives the viewer a glimpse of that particular period in Paris. It has a feeling of having been largely improvised, or that was probably the idea behind the screenplay by Mr. Pialat and Arlette Langmann, which takes the viewer into that milieu.The main reason for watching the film are the two stars: Gerard Depardieu and Isabelle Huppert, two of the brightest stars at an excellent point in their film careers. There is magnetism in their scenes as well as sexual explicitness. Guy Marchand appears as Andre, the husband who must accept his wife's decision in abandoning their marriage.

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.

'Loulou' delights in the same way an expensive, high quality French wine does. It leaves you with a very fine aftertaste.'Loulou's theme isn't new. The film doesn't carry an original plot either. Its colored picturing shows fine, but not extraordinary. Its setting is serious. Its elegant styling never and nowhere puts any weight on your mind.Whatever one further may say about 'Loulou', it's beyond doubt that this very French film stands out for its excellent acting. The three leads convincingly reflect all numerous doubts and tenses sparkling between them, making the plot alive. Their acting fully invites you to participate, to make friends.For those around at the time, 'Loulou' also provides an extra bonus: its perfectly captured mood of 1980.

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.