Loulou
Director: Maurice Pialat
Year Released: 1980
Rating: 2.0
Familiar love triangle fare (with a heavy dose of vagueness): unhappy middle-class woman (Isabelle Huppert) leaves abusive hubby (Guy Marchand) for the brutish, sexually voracious - but still lower-class - title character (Gérard Depardieu), who is unemployed and parasitic. So many (glowing) reviews point to subtext regarding class issues and sexual politics which might very well be in there are but made so subtle they barely register (or rendered moot) - further, this sort of thing happens in many other films, where one person cheats on his/her spouse with someone out of his/her class/'league' for purely sexual reasons. The ending, of all things, comes across as the most unexpected thing in here, as the picture usurps the ordinary love triangle formula with the implication that the Depardieu-Huppert relationship, a case of doomed, crazy love, will only go downhill (as opposed to success, sunrises and babies).
