Just so...so bad

It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Although Loulou is a film about the gradual disintegration of a marriage, it is important to note that nobody has been vilified for it. One might be surprised to learn how two men who have differences over their affections for a woman end up becoming good friends. One doesn't know how well staunch feminists have viewed "Loulou" but it can be said that it presents a very strong willed woman who is aware of her priorities in life. It is for her portrayal as strong willed Nelly that veteran French actress Isabelle Huppert was nominated for César award in the best actress category in 1981.Actor Guy Marchand was also nominated for best supporting actor César for his role as Nelly's husband André. French director Maurice Pialat had absolute control over creating strong characters for his films. This is the reason why his protagonists are believed to have the ability to bear any adversity with stoic calm. This sentiment is nicely echoed in one of his important films Loulou. It is considered to be a masterpiece in Pialat's little but highly productive filmography.

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.

Pialat is certainly one of the most interesting artists of the last century's final quarter.Interesting by his integrity and coherence and healthy simplicity.There is a great intelligence in these straightforward movies,a taste for directness and for narrative 'elementarity.In this film as well he works on a small canvas.He will not flatter the ordinary people,as he never resorts to the standard optimist anthropology that works with the known conventions.Pialat's characters are full human beings-without idealization.This gives his movies a brutal power and also an unspoken and very concrete …;the violence, brutality, 'instinctuality and 'animality of ordinary people have always found in Pialat an observer of admirable competence.In a disco,a young woman,Nelly,dances with a guy,to the displeasure of André,the man that she came with.He slaps her.She spends her night with her acquaintance,Loulou,and she enjoys his erotic strength.She lives together with the plebes,as it were.The scene of the country party with the low people,Loulou's family,is well made.Nelly participates in a burglary,a plunder.These are the people that she becomes friends with.This is Nine ½ Weeks upside down!There is a need of adventure in Nelly.Like La Femme d'à 'côté,Loulou (1980) is a scene of manners.Maurice Pialat sees the sexuality and the copulation as the core,motor and aim of the common everyday human relations.This is the nucleus, the kernel of the human interactions,the sphere's center.If we look around, we see this is true.There is not any word about love or fulfillment;Maurice Pialat's anthropology is correct and transparent.The mechanisms are simple;they are real.In "Loulou" there is a stream of naturalness ,sincerity and energy that confer the movie its freshness and charm.While the story is dirty, sordid and banal,the movie is,as I just put it,charming in its own way,as a work of art,and amazing.The material of "Loulou" is extremely simple—a young woman that comes from a rich family and is not necessarily thin-skinned passes from a violent man to a rudimentary human being,the bum Loulou and finds a certain happiness with him,for a while.As always with Pialat,there is no trace of idealization.Pialat's objectivity is unmatched.He does not comment the facts shown on screen.At a certain moment in the movie,Loulou and Nelly are lying on a sofa,they laze watching TV. The ex-convict that lives with them sits on the sofa's end,at the couple's feet. Meantime, Loulou's hand is lazily caressing Nelly's tits.Pialat will never try to make physiology pass as poetry.In her youth,Mrs. Huppert had the body of a Nereid ,as light as thistle down, and a luminous and delicate flesh that looks extremely well on screen;Pialat knew to showcase these charms of Mrs. Huppert in "Loulou".It is a fine occasion to see her naked.There are a few erotic scenes that …;Nelly looks truly great naked or in bed with one of her two men,she looked very made-to-be-loved.( Naturalism,yes,and refuse of the current conventions,but Pialat always offers the eroticism without spoiling it.He seems very interested in the sexual ardor and his depictions of the intercourse are never cold,never completely detached,Pialat always manages to find the savor of an erotic scene. Physiology,yes,but Pialat detects something important and striking and spectacular in the sexual act—yes,spectacular,and I think this is the only oasis for the spectacular in his films.It is obvious that, filming intercourse,--Lolou/Nelly,and even André/Nelly,he is never simply documenting a relation—it is more than that.Pialat is one of the remarkable cinematographic poets of the sexuality. And the way he films the naked body—here,Mrs. Huppert's,Mrs. Bonnaire's in another film—well,this is surely an affectionate way of filming naked women—Pialat finds poetry and beauty in this,he is dispassionate till it comes to this …;and,suddenly,a striking beauty—here,Mrs. Huppert's young body--I consider this one of the most beautiful aspects of Pialat's art. For this committed realist,the beauty of the nude,the intensity of sex are real,they appear as real. )In another interesting film,…,Pialat filmed ,with equal gusto,Mrs. Bonnaire.This manifests his taste for the very feminine women.The main three actors—Huppert,Depardieu,Marchand—give truly extraordinary performances. Depardieu is required to look like a chimpanzee;he does.But beyond that he does a very good role.Pialat knew that there is a satisfaction of the mind in merely knowing the truth,in reaching it;in their radicalism his movies make very obvious this satisfaction obtained by the mind in knowing the truth.