by Julian Wood
Worth: $14.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Adele Exarchopoulos, Francois Civil, Mallory Wanacque, Malik Frikah
Intro:
… a romance-cum-gangster pic, which is a bold effort, but director Gilles Lellouche doesn’t quite pull it off.
Tough guys gotta be tough, right? If they ain’t tough, no one is gonna respect ‘em. Or, at least that is what they think, if they live in a milieu where every transaction is underwritten and enforced by interpersonal violence. And then, there has to be the ‘moll’, the female counterpart. In the movie formula, the supportive female stands by her man – no matter what – because she knows he is a good guy at heart.
All of these tropes and more are piled on in Gilles Lellouche’s Beating Hearts. Lelouche was a well-respected actor before turning to directing (Sink or Swim). Here, he is trying his hand at a romance-cum-gangster pic, which is a bold effort, but he doesn’t quite pull it off.
The first half of the film lays out the amour fou (or in this case amour ouf, which is one notch further up in the craziness stakes) between Jackie (Mallory Wanacque) and Clotaire (Malik Frikah). Jackie is rebelling against her own family, but she is impressionable as well as tough. When she meets the angry-at-everything but charismatic Clotaire, he is flaying around at the world. We sense that his feminine-sounding name can’t help but give him a boy named Sue complex. He’ll punch out anyone who laughs at him. Jackie is too classy for him in one way (and her parents make that pretty clear). However, true to the formula, she can’t resist the lure of a bad guy who she feels she can rescue.
The young lovers are certainly convincing. There is a likable energy to their getting to know each other stage of the relationship, including a beautifully filmed love/sex scene shot in a meadow which manages to ‘show nothing’ but convey everything. They have our sympathy and we want these star-crossed lovers to succeed whilst knowing full well that something will go wrong. And indeed, it does.
The film then jumps to many years on. Now Jackie is played by Adele Exarchopoulos and Clotaire is played by Francois Civil.
Civil is one of those faces that you will have seen in a lot of dramas (he was dashing as D’Artagnan for example in the recent Three Musketeers), but here, he has to carry a much bigger load. He manages to suggest the rage within, and he is explosive when he lashes out, but it is a bit of a one-dimensional performance. Exarchopoulos is probably one of the big drawcards here. She has been building a steady rep after blazing onto the screen as Lea Sedoux’s ingénue lover in the notorious Blue is the Warmest Colour. She does have a range beyond her trademark pout, and once again, she really throws herself into this role. Jackie isn’t just a dupe, even if a willingness to forgive Clotaire everything, is a little hard to fully accept.
The film does take missteps in the transition to the adult gangster mode. There is a lot of tit-for-tat violence, which is not a problem in itself, but is wearing in its repetition. At one point, there is a gang raid on a rival gang’s disco. This orgy of violence is set to a heavy rap soundtrack, which makes it come across as a sort of set piece music video. It looks dropped in for effect. At this point, the film looks as lost here as its hero’s moral compass and it leaves a nasty aftertaste. The reactive stance that was forced on Clotaire by his upbringing gives way to something more psychotic and much harder to like, let alone admire. At this point, you feel that they deserve each other and not in a good way. It is a shame really, because the first half of the film is pretty good and it warranted better.
The film doesn’t have much to say that is really new, so it has to rely upon a skil telling. There are glimpses of that here, but not quite enough.
