Beat­ing Hearts – first-look review

Shake­speare was real­ly onto some­thing when he wrote ​“The course of true love nev­er did run smooth” in Act 1, Scene 1 of A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream. This tru­ism has fuelled roman­tic nar­ra­tives the world over for cen­turies, and now, in Gilles Lellouche’s 165-minute melo­dra­ma, two young lovers dis­cov­er as much for them­selves, as they first meet as head­strong teenagers and lat­er encounter each oth­er as world-weary adults.

Jack­ie (played by Mal­lo­ry Wanecque as a teen and Adèle Exar­chopou­los as an adult) lives a com­fort­able sub­ur­ban life with her father (Alain Cha­bat) fol­low­ing the death of her moth­er in a trag­ic car acci­dent when she was a child. After being expelled from her pri­vate Catholic school, she enrols in a pub­lic one, where she first clash­es with Clotaire (Malik Frikah and lat­er François Civ­il), a cheeky, vio­lent thug who’s dropped out of school to focus on pet­ty crime and caus­ing a nui­sance. Jack­ie is the first girl to stand up to Clotaire, and it’s love at first sight for him. Jack­ie takes a lit­tle more con­vinc­ing, but there’s some­thing about the wild boy that she’s pow­er­less to resist. Their bud­ding romance is defined by long rides on his dirt­bike, a dar­ing Flam­by heist and vis­its to the local swim­ming hole and beach; around Jack­ie, Clotaire soft­ens, and for a moment, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a future not fuelled by his fists seems entire­ly possible.

But then Clotaire and his mate Lionel steal some hash from some local gang­sters, and after receiv­ing a bit of a kick­ing, Clotaire impress­es them with his vio­lent streak. His fate is sealed, and while he tum­bles fur­ther down the rab­bit hole lead­ing to an even­tu­al 12-year prison sen­tence for a crime he didn’t com­mit, Jack­ie is left alone and broken-hearted.

Pick­ing up in the 90s, Clotaire is out of prison and Jack­ie is out of fucks to give. Their reunion is inevitable, but first, there’s Clotaire’s revenge against the gang­sters who let him take the fall and Jackie’s new boyfriend Jeff (played by Vin­cent Lacoste) to con­tend with – new com­pli­ca­tions for old lovers.

Adapt­ed from Neville Thompson’s 1997 Irish nov­el ​‘Jack­ie Loves Johnser OK?’ by Lel­louche, Ahmed Hami­di and Audrey Diwan, some of the sense of place is lost in trans­port­ing the nar­ra­tive to North East of France, but a sound­track of cer­ti­fied 80s bangers includ­ing Sir­ius by The Alan Par­sons Project and A For­est by The Cure help to give the film some of its propul­sive ener­gy. The super­sized run­time is extrav­a­gant, but Beat­ing Hearts doesn’t drag as much as you might expect giv­en the fair­ly cliché sub­ject mat­ter – this is down to the excel­lent cast­ing of the four leads, whose per­for­mances sync up per­fect­ly across the two decades.

While Beat­ing Hearts is not exact­ly rein­vent­ing the wheel with its Romeo and Juli­et nar­ra­tive and Clotaire’s inevitably late-game redemp­tion arc does feel a lit­tle rushed con­sid­er­ing the film’s over­all length, there’s still some­thing like­able about this sweep­ing romance, despite its unde­ni­able naivety.