Loulou
Intense, raw, lusty performances by Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu power this sexually charged Parisian love-triangle drama made by the late, great French director Maurice Pialat. Depardieu is in his uncouth element as the eponymous antihero, Loulou, a charismatic ex-con who lures Huppert’s thrill-hungry office worker, Nelly, away from her respectable but stuffy husband, André, played by Guy Marchand. Loulou and Nelly’s boozy affair inevitably proves bumpy, with her torn between two very flawed and manipulative men, but Pialat observes this emotional fireworks display with a coolly forensic eye and no moral judgment.
Isabelle Huppert, Gérard Depardieu, Guy Marchand
- Notes From Rachel KushnerShould Nelly, played by Isabelle Huppert, stay with her educated, bourgeois, uptight and angry husband, or should she go off with leather-clad lowlife Gérard Depardieu, who is good in bed but not for much else? If it’s no surprise to guess which she chooses—as Loulou’s mother says, “If she’s so nice, why is she with you?”—this film is still full of unexpected delights.
