Maurice Pialat's portrait of contemporary France mocks prosperity as a substitute for social and sexual revolution. Nelly abandons her bourgeois friends and a steady relationship for the unemployed layabout Loulou, whose charms include focusing his energy into sex.As noted, this film was directed by Maurice Pialat. For the average person, the name Pialat means nothing. But he may be one of the best French directors of the last 25 years, what might be called the post-New Wave, perhaps. And "Loulou" in retrospect may be his most accessible work because it stars Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu, two of the biggest French stars of their era.I don't have much to say on the film itself because it was not a story that appealed to me. Technically well-made, and an interesting showcase for Depardieu if you like seeing him in bed. But not my sort of plot.

I only found this French film because it was featured in the book of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, I recognised the leading actor starring, so I was hoping the critics giving good reviews was right. Basically middle-class Parisian housewife Nelly (Isabelle Huppert) is married to possessive husband André (Guy Marchand), but she is bored of her lifestyle and longs for something else. Then she meets charming street thug Loulou (Gérard Depardieu), he has no job and resorts to robbery to survive, but he provides Nelly some excitement, and she leaves her husband to have a passionate affair with him. For a while it just seems like a casual fling, Nelly is fulfilling lust and Loulou is getting sex and living off her money, but in the mind-set of a middle-class bourgeois, André is doing whatever he can to win back and convince her to return. But then things get complicated when Nelly finds out that she is pregnant with Loulou's child, but he says he will support her, whether he can change his ways and provide for her is a big question. Also starring Humbert Balsan as Michel, Bernard Tronczyk as Rémy, Christian Boucher as Pierrot, Frédérique Cerbonnet as Dominique, Jacqueline Dufranne as Mémère, Willy Safar as Jean-Louis and Agnès Rosier as Cathy. Huppert gives a good performance as the bored housewife who leaves her husband out of boredom and gives in to unadulterated lust, Depardieu is interesting as the unemployed layabout who is charming and likable, together they are an odd couple, but great to watch, there isn't much of story to talk about, it is more a look at social and sexual interaction in contemporary France, with some good backdrops, it is a watchable drama. Gerard Depardieu was number 90 on The 100 Greatest Movie Stars. Very good!

This is the pathetic story of a woman who leaves her well-off and educated husband for Loulou (Gerard Depardieu), an unemployed ex-con. The storyline doesn't deviate much from this premise outside of a few interesting anecdotes here and there, and the rest of the film is spent on depicting the interactions between the characters.So why does this simple film deserve eight stars? In my opinion, it's because Pialat has focused his attention on a single element that dominates all aspects of its development: realism. Characters depicted are paradoxical and confused, just as many people are when it comes to love and relationships. There is no soundtrack to distract the viewer. Perhaps most interesting of all is the way the film is written and acted; every line seems spontaneous, not scripted and polished. Because of this, the film really succeeds in the impression that you really are looking through a window into people's lives. It's all great cinema; the techniques used in this film really should be used more frequently.Make no mistake, though: this is an actor's film. All three of the leads are equally brilliant. We can feel the raw emotion when one of them make a sudden outburst, though we may not always understand their motivations. This movie certainly would not have been the same without them.I recommend this film to anyone who enjoys art-house cinema.

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.