Critical response Beating Hearts was the lowest-rated film in official competition at the
2024 Cannes Film Festival.
Screen Dailys Cannes jury grid gave the film a rating of 1.3 out of 4 stars, stating: "Lellouche's epic romance, known as ''L'Amour Ouf
in French markets, scored one zero (bad) from Mathieu Macharet at Le Monde, followed by seven one stars (poor) and four two stars." It also had the worst score on the French cinema website Chaos Reign
, which collected the reviews from several French and international newspapers and magazines and gave the film a rating of 0.9 out of 4 stars, and the worst score on the American website Ioncinema
, which compiled the reviews from 20 French and international publications and gave the film a rating of 1.6 out of 5 stars. Metacritic'' included the film on its list of worst films from the 2024 Cannes Film Festival. Adam Sanchez of
GQ France wrote; "Gilles Lellouche disappoints with his symphony of big muscles and broken hearts". Arjun Sajip of
IndieWire gave the film a B+ score and pointed out the film's disappointing treatment of its sole character of color, "Clotaire's loyal friend Lionel, whose entire role as both a kid and an ill-fated young man is restricted to being the target of racial slurs, the sidekick or the comic relief. (Those who saw Lellouche's previous feature,
Sink or Swim, may recall a similar superficiality in the writing of that film's principal character of color.)". Tim Grierson of
Screen Daily praised the performances of Malik Frikah and Mallory Wanecque as the teenagers Clotaire and Jackie, but also criticized the lack of chemistry between François Civil and Adèle Exarchopoulos as the adult versions of the two leads: "Unfortunately, once the couple is reunited in their 20s, the film's buzzy high dissipates. No matter the grittiness of Exarchopoulos and Civil, meant to suggest how these teens were beaten down by life, their rapport isn't nearly as sparkling as before. This is, partly, the point, as the adult Jackie and Clotaire warily try to reconnect, but
Beating Hearts knowingly over-the-top ending requires an intense chemistry the two adult leads cannot fully muster." Writing for the American website
The Playlist, Gregory Ellwood gave the film a C− score, stating: "there is little Lellouche does over the first hour to portray the teenage romance between the two as life-changing. Despite Frikah and Wanecque's obvious talents, the pair aren't selling a love affair for the ages. That makes it a bit difficult to be invested in whatever happens next." [...] "As the film progresses, the narrative choices somehow become even less believable and Lellouche begins to throw everything and the kitchen sink at the screen. There are recurring dance numbers (sorta), a cringe-worthy montage giving cliche '90s American hip-hop music video, and a prelude that turns out to be utterly pointless. At one point, a perfectly timed car explosion occurs right after Clotaire slams someone and you wonder, is this meant to be self-aware? Has Lellouche seen
Hot Fuzz? Does he think this is cool?" [...] Ellwood also pointed out the lack of chemistry between the film's leading actors: "Like their younger counterparts, perhaps if Civil had Exarchopoulos had some genuine on-screen chemistry all would be forgiven. Maybe
Beating Hearts would be worth its wild and bumpy ride. But, oh, no. We've still got 20 minutes left. Strap in." Jordan Mintzer of
The Hollywood Reporter called the film "overblown and downright vulgar at times," and wrote: "If you took
Magnolia,
Goodfellas,
Boyz n the Hood and perhaps
Claude Lelouch's
A Man and a Woman, plugged them all into the latest version of
ChatGPT and asked it to spit out a brand new film, you could wind up with something like Gilles Lellouche's (no relation to Claude) swooning French crime romance,
Beating Hearts (''L'Amour ouf'')", and also that "Clotaire and Jackie also come across as caricatures of the French working-class, unable to control themselves or their emotions because that's apparently what working-class kids are like. Lellouche divides the world into stereotypes that he amplifies in nearly every scene, as if the drama will somehow be believable if everyone screams their lungs out. This happens quite a lot throughout the movie and especially during the last hour — the film clocks in at a gut-busting 166 minutes". Writing for the American website
First Showing, Alex Billington said: "Putting two good-looking people into your movie doesn't automatically mean they have chemistry nor does it make their love story fascinating. I thought they weren't even allowed to make movies with a plot this unoriginal anymore - it's the most banal relationship ever. Smart girl with the bad boy. And that's it? Unfortunately yes. This three hours spent on that basic of a love story? By the time we get to the part of the story where Adèle Exarchopoulos shows up, even she seems like she doesn't want to be in this movie anymore, serving up an entirely lackluster performance where she's supposed to have dormant feelings for this guy she hasn't seen in 12 years. This is after she marries some slick asshole (Vincent Lacoste) who fires her from her job then hits on her. Isn't this kind of misogynistic storytelling illegal? I guess not in France yet. This movie is an epic waste of three hours that doesn't offer a single ounce of anything tantalizing or exciting or romantic in its many widescreen vistas. It's derivative filmmaking at its worst and hopefully will be ignored by audiences. Just watch
La La Land or
Cherbourg again instead of this." Writing for the French newspaper
Le Parisien, Catherine Balle wrote: "What is first surprising in this feature film, is its form. We were told it was a musical: only two dance scenes slip into these 2h46 punctuated by hits from the 80s (
The Cure,
Prince…), where the actors never sing. Then, it is its subject. Is ''L'Amour ouf
a romantic comedy or a gangster film? Between the two, between Before Sunrise and BAC Nord'', Gilles Lellouche's heart wavered. And the filmmaker did not decide”, and also: "we are bothered by the complacency of the screenplay with regard to the outbursts of its hero." For Juliette Hochberg of the French magazine
Marie Claire, "
Beating Hearts is not a musical comedy, as it was announced here and there, but the precise work of the sound, even more of the silence, offers a total spectacle. It is not a romantic, "idealisable" model either. Clotaire accumulates more fits of anger than green flags." Samuel Douhaire of the French magazine
Télérama wrote that "Lellouche wants to do
Paul Thomas Anderson,
Martin Scorsese,
John Woo and
Jacques Demy at the same time – That's a lot for a single film, even if it lasts almost three hours, especially when you don't yet have the talent of either, and his very sentimental vision of love is that of an eternal teenager. From this interminable and, ultimately, exhausting hodgepodge, we will nevertheless save the first hour, carried by the young and formidable Mallory Wanecque (discovered at the end of 2022 in
The Worst Ones) and Malik Frikah. The touching performance of Alain Chabat as a protective and complicit father. And a beautiful dialogue sequence, tender then tense, between Jackie, Clotaire and a contemptuous supermarket manager, where, for once, Gilles Lellouche refrains from being smart with his camera." For Céline Rouden of the French newspaper
La Croix, "nothing is right in this film which pushes all the sliders to the limit: saturated colours, omnipresent music, non-existent dialogues and affected staging whose overexcited energy poorly masks the absence of purpose, when it does not refer to a simplistic morality", [...] "A French
Romeo + Juliet (1996) which undoubtedly seeks to ogle
Baz Luhrmann and his excesses but produces only a pale imitation and even sinks into ridicule." Julien Rousset of the French newspaper
Sud Ouest called the film "a huge disappointment". "The disappointment is all the greater. It is no longer the big bath but the big vain, a long clip of two hours and forty-six drowned in a deluge of music and violence." Gautier Roos wrote for the French website
Chaos Reign that "nothing in this film justifies the money spent on the screen, nor this duration of 2h46, nor the epic breath that this story of love prevented by destiny would like to embody."
Peter Bradshaw of
The Guardian gave the film 2 out of 5 stars and wrote that it "aims for a Springsteenesque blue-collar energy but buckles under the weight of its own naivety." For the French website
Écran Large, "
Beating Hearts pushes the limits. The result is an excessive, disproportionate and very clumsy work, whose rare sensitivity is weighed down by its bloated artifices and almost glorified violence." Fabien Lemercier of
Cineuropa wrote: "This fireworks display with a €35 million budget is the opposite of finesse and will undoubtedly find its audience thanks to a fittingly aggressive marketing campaign, but it would have been much more reasonable not to launch it in competition at the 77th Cannes Film Festival where even if masters of cinema can sometimes get tired, a certain artistic excellence is still
de rigueur." Stéphane Gobbo of the Swiss newspaper
Le Temps stated that
Beating Hearts is not a musical comedy and that there were better films screened out of competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival that deserved to take its place in official competition.
Accolades ==References==