‘Beating Hearts’ World Premiere Gets 15-Minute Standing Ovation – Cannes Film Festival

This evening the Cannes Film Festival welcomed another world premiere of an ambitious French title with Beating Hearts (L’Amour Ouf). Gilles Lellouche’s competition entry from Studiocanal was greeted with a 15-minute standing ovation inside the Grand Théâtre Lumière. 

The modern Romeo and Juliet tale co-stars François Civil, who featured as D’Artagnan in last year’s Three Musketeers reboot, and Blue is the Warmest Color’s Adèle Exarchopoulos. The pair play former childhood sweethearts from different sides of the tracks.

Having gone their separate ways when the boy gets caught up in gang violence and lands in jail on trumped-up murder charges, the couple reconnects against the odds years later.

Further cast includes Raphaël Quenard, Benoît Poelvoorde, Elodie Bouchez, Vincent Lacoste, Alain Chabat and Jean-Pascal Zadi.

The film is adapted from Irish writer Neville Thompson’s 1997 novel Jackie Loves Johnser OK?  which unfolded against the backdrop of Dublin’s tough suburb of Ballyfermot in the 1980s.

Lellouche has transposed the story to France, co-writing the screenplay with Ahmed Hamidi, his collaborator on 2018 comedy Sink Or Swim, and Venice Golden Lion winner Audrey Diwan.

At Unifrance’s Paris Rendez-Vous in January, Lellouche said, “I fell in love with this book and this story about a violent love story. I jumped into this adventure with Ahmed Hamidi and Audrey Diwan.” Studiocanal will release in France on October 16.