Festival de Cannes 2024, Beating Hearts and All We Imagine as Light

Beating Hearts team ©YesICannes.com

As the competition drew to a close, the Cannes Film Festival screened Beating Hearts by Gilles Lellouche and All We Imagine as Light by Payal Kapadia.

Festival de Cannes 2024 : the competition draws to a close with the screening of Beating Hearts, an adaptation of the novel Jackie Loves Johnser Ok? by Irish writer Neville Thompson, directed by French actor, screenwriter and director Gilles Lellouche, and All We Imagine as Light, by Indian director Payal Kapadia, the first Indian film in the official selection since Shaji N. Karun‘s Destinée (Swaham) in 1994.

Beating hearts ©Trésor Films – Chi-Fou-Mi Productions – Studio Canal – Cédric Bertrand

Love put to shame

It was Benoît Poelvoorde who offered Neville Thompson’s book Jackie Loves Johnser Ok? – set in Dublin in the 80s and 90s – to Gilles Lellouche, inviting him to make a film about it. The story takes place in northern France and begins in the 1980s. Two teenagers, Clotaire (Malik Frikah), a small-time rascal, and the studious schoolgirl Jackie (Mallory Wanecque) fall madly in love. As their love story begins, the boy is drawn into the gang of La Brosse (Benoît Poelvoorde) and becomes involved in organised crime. After a robbery goes wrong, he spends ten years in prison. After his release, Clotaire (François Civil) becomes a successful gangster, but still thinks about Jackie (Adèle Exarchopoulos) who, although in a relationship, remains unhappy.

©Trésor Films – Chi-Fou-Mi Productions – Studio Canal – Cédric Bertrand

A touch of musical comedy

Six years after the success of Le Grand Bain (Out of Competition, 2018), Gilles Lellouche makes his mark in the Competition with a romantic comedy with violence in it, a rocky love fresco spanning two decades. A seductive 80s/90s soundtrack accompanies the twists and turns: The Cure, New Order and Madonna for the romance, Nas and Jay-Z for the violence. At one point, a brilliant choreography by La Horde, who have worked with Madonna and Christine and the Queens, adds a touch of musical comedy.

©Trésor Films – Chi-Fou-Mi Productions – Studio Canal – Cédric Bertrand

A generous mix of genres

We’re carried away by the romantic vein for some three hours, thanks to a staging that gives meaning to the emotions running through the characters. The mix of genres, between energy and romance, makes for an epic love story that maintains its momentum without a break: you can see that the director is generous and wants to say a lot, but perhaps a little too much, and the film would benefit from being pared down. The cast includes Alain Chabat, Raphaël Quenard, Jean-Pascal Zadi, Benoît Poelvoorde, Vincent Lacoste and Elodie Bouchez.

All We Imagine as Light ©DR

A feminist portrait of little people

After Une nuit sans savoir, a documentary that won L’Œil d’or, the documentary prize at the 2021 Cannes Film Festival, Payal Kapadia enters the Official Competition with All We Imagine as Light, a first feature-length fiction film with a social and feminist aim, telling the story of anonymous “little people” in the streets of Mumbai. Divided into two parts, Payal Kapadia portrays Anu and Prabha, two Mumbai nurses caught up in a daily routine dictated by their work and the singularity of their romantic relationships. Prabha’s daily life is disrupted when she receives an unexpected gift from her husband, who has gone to live abroad. Her young flatmate, Anu, tries in vain to find a place in the city where she can make love to her boyfriend. A trip to a coastal village offers the two women a place where their desires can finally manifest themselves.