L'amour ouf (Beating Hearts)

Love makes one crazy. Just ask Clotaire (François Civil) and Jackie (Adèle Exarchopoulos), who meet in a French working-class neighbourhood in an unnamed coastal town in the 1980s. Despite their different social backgrounds - she belongs to the middle class, he to the working class - an intense romance develops. Only: Clotaire also flirts with the underworld, which led to him being put behind bars for a long time. After his release, he tries desperately to win back his lost love. Has his chance passed? With a visual style reminiscent of early Spike Lee and a soundtrack full of nostalgic hits by The Cure and others, Gilles Lellouche - whose debut Le Grand Bain was a real blockbuster in France - brews up a melodramatic gangster film about love, struggle and redemption. Thanks to L'événement cinematographer Audrey Diwan, who helped Lellouche add depth to Neville Thomson's 1997 book Jackie Loves Johnser OK?.