Starring: Adele Exarchopoulos, François Civil, Malik Frikah, Mallory Wanecque, Alain Chabat
Distributor: Palace Films
Runtime: 166 mins. Reviewed in Jun 2025
Reviewer: Fr Peter Malone MSC
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Local rebellious teenager Clotaire falls for his schoolmate Jackie, but gang violence leads him to a darker destructive path. After years apart, the star-crossed lovers discover that every path they’ve taken leads them back together.
Phew Love. An unexpected beginning to a review. However, Google tells us that this is the English translation for the French title, Amour Ouf. The English title of Beating Hearts sounds more respectable, rather highlighting the nature of the love between a young man who is afflicted with the name, often mocked, of Clotaire, and Jacqueline, always called Jackie, who live in an industrial city in France.
At nearly three hours, this is a long film. It immerses the audience in the atmosphere of the town, the neighbourhoods, factories, the port, crowded homes, violence in schools, the 1970s and 1980s.
The first half introduces us to these two central characters, striking performances from Frikah and Waneque as, respectively, 17-year-old Clotaire and 15-year-old Jackie. Even at home, when very young, Clotaire imposes himself on everyone around him, his impatient factory working father, his mother, the siblings. Jackie, on the other hand, has lost her mother in a sudden car crash, lives with her earnest father who wants only the best for her. While Clotaire throws his weight around at school, tough with fists and language, he is attracted to the young girl and she to him. There are some romantic sequences – dancing, comfortable together, beating hearts. Music is an important part of the film. The songs of the period play throughout the whole film.
But, this is also a crime story. Clotaire and his friends gradually getting caught up in a world of drug dealing, rivalries, gangs, violence and bosses who appreciate Clotaire’s carefree and violent talents. Many French writers and directors enjoy making action crime films. Director Lellouche, a prominent star in French cinema for many decades, has appeared in several of these films and energises the action here in an elaborate heist sequence during the protest by sacked workers at the port. There is an eruption of violence and Clotaire is sent to prison.
As something of a balance to Clotaire’s story, there is a focus on the interaction between Jackie and her father, his constant concern for her, the ups and downs of her crises, reacting against his protection but always going back to him for support, love and advice.
In the second half of the film Jackie encounters an up-and-coming businessman, Jeffrey (Lacoste), eventually marrying him, yet, we might say, her heart definitely not beating for him. And then Clotaire gets out of prison. He seems subdued, and for a moment, we hope that his life has changed. But, there is the issue of taking a fall for others and seeds of revenge kindled. The adult Clotaire and Jackie are played by stars Civil and Exarchopoulos.
So, after such a long time sharing the beating hearts of Clotaire and Jackie, how can it possibly end? As with the words of the French title, Phew Love.
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