Beating Hearts

Beating Hearts (L'Amour ouf) is a 2024 romantic comedy musical film directed by Gilles Lellouche from a screenplay he co-wrote with Audrey Diwan, Ahmed Hamidi and Julien Lambroschini, based on the 1997 Irish novel Jackie Loves Johnser OK? by Neville Thompson. The film is a co-production between France and Belgium. It stars François Civil and Adèle Exarchopoulos. The ensemble cast includes Malik Frikah, Mallory Wanecque, Alain Chabat, Benoît Poelvoorde, Vincent Lacoste, Jean-Pascal Zadi, Élodie Bouchez, Karim Leklou, Raphaël Quenard and Anthony Bajon.

The film had its world premiere at the Main Competition of the 77th Cannes Film Festival on 23 May 2024, and will be released theatrically in France by StudioCanal on 16 October 2024.

Plot
The story spans 20 years and begins in the North East of France with two teenagers who fall madly in love, a girl from an upper-middle-class family and a boy from a working-class family. Their love story is quickly doomed to failure when he ends up becoming a criminal and spends 12 years in prison.

Cast

 * François Civil as Clotaire
 * Adèle Exarchopoulos as Jackie
 * Malik Frikah as Clotaire (17 years old)
 * Mallory Wanecque as Jackie (15 years old)
 * Alain Chabat as Jackie's father
 * Anthony Bajon as Tony
 * Jean-Pascal Zadi as Lionel
 * Benoît Poelvoorde as La Brosse
 * Vincent Lacoste as Jeffrey
 * Élodie Bouchez as Clotaire's mother
 * Karim Leklou as Clotaire's father
 * Raphaël Quenard as Kiki
 * Louis Raison as Clotaire (12 years old)

Development
On 2 September 2013, Gilles Lellouche said in an interview for the French radio station France Inter that he was going to direct an adaptation of Neville Thompson's 1997 Irish novel Jackie Loves Johnser OK?. Lellouche described the project as "an ultra-violent romantic comedy". It was actor Benoît Poelvoorde who gave Lellouche a copy of the book and told him he should adapt it into a film. Lellouche fell in love with the story and started writing the screenplay together with Poelvoorde, but it did not work out, so Lellouche decided to continue writing alone. Lellouche then co-wrote the screenplay with Audrey Diwan, Ahmed Hamidi and Julien Lambroschini, who started writing it in 2019.

On 9 July 2021, a teaser poster for the film describing it as "an ultra-violent musical and romantic comedy" with a 2023 release date on it was unveiled in a special issue of Variety at the Marché du Film during the Cannes Film Festival, but the cast was still unknown.

The film is a co-production between France's Chi-Fou-Mi Productions, Trésor Films, StudioCanal, France 2 Cinéma and Cool Industrie, with a budget initially announced in May 2023 as being €32 million ($34 million), making it StudioCanal's biggest investment in a French-language film. The Belgian companies Artémis Productions, RTBF, Proximus, BeTV and Shelter Prod co-produced the film. Belgium's Tax Shelter later revealed in April 2024 that the film's total budget was €35,059,149 million. According to Cineuropa in an article published on 26 March 2024 citing CNC (National Centre for Cinema and the Moving Image)'s 2023 report, the total budget was €35.7 million.

Producers Alain Attal and Hugo Sélignac described the film as "a love rollercoaster, mixing love, violence and dance." The dance collective (La)Horde was hired to create three dances for the film. The soundtrack will feature 1980s and 1990s songs from artists such as The Cure, New Order, Madonna, Nas, and Jay-Z. The film is set in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

Lellouche cited Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and West Side Story (1957) as references for the film.

Casting
François Civil and Adèle Exarchopoulos were announced in the lead roles in a casting call for extras published on 7 February 2023, which also announced that filming would take place between May and September 2023. Lellouche had previously co-starred with Civil and Exarchopoulos in the 2021 film BAC Nord, whose screenplay was co-written by Audrey Diwan.

Élodie Bouchez was announced in the cast on 28 March 2023. The full cast (Mallory Wanecque, Malik Frikah, Alain Chabat, Benoît Poelvoorde, Vincent Lacoste, Jean-Pascal Zadi, Karim Leklou, Raphaël Quenard and Anthony Bajon) was revealed on 21 May 2023, when producer Hugo Sélignac shared on Instagram the poster for the film that was featured on the cover of that day's issue of the French magazine Le Film français.

Filming
Principal photography began on 9 May 2023. Shooting lasted for 18 weeks, 88 days, and wrapped up on 15 September 2023. Filming took place in several regions of France such as Villeneuve-d'Ascq, Dunkirk, Lille, Douai, Valenciennes, Cambrai, Avesnes-sur-Helpe, Calais, Saint-Omer, Béthune, Lens, Arras, Boulogne-sur-Mer and Montreuil-sur-Mer, and at the Institut Saint-Henri de Comines in Comines-Warneton in Belgium.

Post-production
In an interview with French journalist Pierre Lescure on the French TV show Beau Geste in October 2023, Lellouche said the film will have "at least 3 hours of runtime". However, in May 2024, the official website of the Cannes Film Festival listed the runtime as 2 hours and 46 minutes.

Release
The film had its world premiere in official competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival on 23 May 2024.

StudioCanal will release the film in France on 16 October 2024.

The film will be released outside France with the title Beating Hearts. It was the first film to be co-acquired by Canal Plus, Netflix and France Télévisions. The film was introduced to buyers at Unifrance's Rendez-Vous in Paris in January 2024.