Beating Hearts

Two teenagers from different classes fall in love in northeastern France. He gets involved in crime and serves twelve years while she builds a life. The film covers that separation and the reunion across roughly two decades. Gilles Lellouche adapted it from Neville Thompson's 1997 Irish novel Jackie Loves Johnser OK?. Adèle Exarchopoulos and François Civil play the adults, with Mallory Wanecque and Malik Frikah as their younger selves. The budget was 35.7 million euros, StudioCanal's largest investment in a French-language film. Shooting ran from May to September 2023 across northern France and Belgium. The first cut ran four hours; the Cannes version came in around two hours forty-six. It played in competition at Cannes and drew the lowest critics' score in that year's official selection, 1.3 out of 4. At home the response was very different. It took thirteen nominations at the 50th César Awards, with Alain Chabat winning Best Supporting Actor, and grossed 36 million dollars worldwide. Who it is for: viewers who love large, stylised, music-driven French melodrama. Who it is not for: anyone with no patience for length or excess, which is precisely where critics caught on it.