Gilles Lellouche’s "Beating Hearts" Receives Longest Standing Ovation at Cannes

The 77th Cannes Film Festival welcomed Thursday evening the world premiere of Gilles Lellouche’s ambitious French title "Beating Hearts" (L’Amour Ouf).

The pic is a competition entry from Studiocanal and 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 as Adèle Exarchopoulos in "Blue is the Warmest Color". 

The pair play former childhood sweethearts from different sides of the track. 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.

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

The movie 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 the 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 the title in France on October 16.