You’ve seen it all before. At an interminable 166 minutes (nearly three hours), Gilles Lellouche’s overambitious and overbloated gangster romance tells the story of a young man and and even young woman who swear allegiance and eternal love to one another at a very tender age. The unpredictable twists and turns of life send the gorgeous but awkward-named Clotaire (François Civil) to prison, while the irresistible Jackie (Adèle Exarchopoulos) marries Jeffrey (Vincent Lacoste), a soft-spoken and handsome man around her age, and settles for a stable household. What will happen when they meet again, after the sexy male is finally released from custody? The script is based on Irish writer Neville Thompson’s novel Jackie Loves Johnser OK?.
The majority of the story takes place during the turn of the century, when the novel was published. Clotaire is a rugged gangster facing off a rival faction. He is inside his vehicle, in the company of his own thugs. A major fire exchange takes place, and our protagonist is shot in the head. Rewind a couple of decades. A teenage version of Clotaire (played by baby-faced Malik Frikah) is just beginning to hone his bad boy skills. He has a motorbike, a trendy haircut, and is learning how to exert his dominance over other males. A daily exercise in toxic masculinity. This doesn’t prevent him from spending time with the innocent Jackie, a couple of years his junior (now played by Mallory Wanecque). Her father (Alain Chabat) disapproves of the romance, but this naturally does not prevent the two opposites from attracting like a magnet, and allowing their romance to blossom. Full redemption comes as they surf at the front of fast-moving train, very much a la Winslet/DSiCaprio in James Cameron’s Titanic (1997) – in the film’s most beautiful scene.
The story alternates from sweet lovemaking on an idyllic beach to banal bang-bang on the industrial outskirts of the same French coastal town. The familiar juxtaposition of heterosexual tenderness and masculine failure. Aesthetically, it morphs from fantasy-imbued, dreamy imagery straight into sombre Neo-noir action. Civil does a decent job conveying a sense of despondency disrupted by the burning desire to make up for the mistakes of the past and re rekindle his long-last love. He is not entirely evil. He served his sentence in order to spare his associates, and never snitched on any of them (his good deeds are never reciprocated with gratitude, though). Now he has to confront Jackie’s current partner. Jeffrey is a flat character representing the normalcy into which Jackie conveniently slipped. The question is whether she will break away from the comfort of the nuclear family, and allow herself to lapse into the estrogen- and adrenaline-inducing thrills of her interrupted juvenile love. Surely reason must prevail above whim?
The movie is lifted by a heart-stopping soundtrack, which includes Price’s Nothing Compares to You (played at multiple scenes, and performed by the American singer himself, not Sinead O’Connor) and The Cure’s A Forest, ensuring some moments of emotional rapture. These are not enough to justify the epic duration of a largely unimaginative story. With a very predictable, rambling ending, Beating Hearts has few surprises and subversions in store for viewers. That’s one beat that your heart that you’re allowed to skip.
Beating Hearts premiered in the Official Competition of the 77th Cannes International Film Festival, when this piece was originally written. Predictably, it did not sntch any major prizes. In cinemas on Friday, August 15th (2025).
