Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Intense, gripping, stylish and poignant

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Although Loulou is a film about the gradual disintegration of a marriage, it is important to note that nobody has been vilified for it. One might be surprised to learn how two men who have differences over their affections for a woman end up becoming good friends. One doesn't know how well staunch feminists have viewed "Loulou" but it can be said that it presents a very strong willed woman who is aware of her priorities in life. It is for her portrayal as strong willed Nelly that veteran French actress Isabelle Huppert was nominated for César award in the best actress category in 1981.Actor Guy Marchand was also nominated for best supporting actor César for his role as Nelly's husband André. French director Maurice Pialat had absolute control over creating strong characters for his films. This is the reason why his protagonists are believed to have the ability to bear any adversity with stoic calm. This sentiment is nicely echoed in one of his important films Loulou. It is considered to be a masterpiece in Pialat's little but highly productive filmography.

I used to think that Isabelle Huppert became interested in sleaze in the late 90s, around the time she made School Of Flesh but now I see that as far back as 1980 she was inserting a toe into murky waters. Watching this film you get the impression that Pialet has seen Tennesee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire and focused on Stanley Kowalski and Stella DuBois at the expense of Blanche and decided to speculate on how Stella, a genteel daughter of a plantation owner, hooked up with Stanley, a Polish lorry driver who has been walking erect only since Tuesday. So, presumably using this speculation as a starting point Pialet takes up his scissors and a piece of thin cardboard and fashions Nelly (Huppert) an educated, middle class bored woman and allows her path to cross that of LouLou (Gerard Depardieu) a guy about one and a half steps up from an ape, lately out of the slammer whose only interests in life are sex and violence. The result is predictable; the moth is attracted to the flame. And that's it. No fresh insights into the Human Condition; no polemics, no point of view, just a trawl through a garbage can for its own sake. As ever Huppert and Depardieu are excellent as is Guy Marchand, whom Huppert leaves for Depardieu but sometimes excellence is not enough.

Well-made but basically dreary low-life melodrama which, according to the accompanying interview with lead Isabelle Huppert, writer/director Pialat infused with a good deal of autobiographical detail; given the mainly unsympathetic characters involved, it doesn't do him any compliments - and he does seem to have been a troubled man, as Huppert also says that Pialat often disappeared for days on end during the shoot! The acting is uniformly excellent, however; despite their relatively young age, Huppert and co-star Gerard Depardieu (as the title character!) were already at the forefront of modern French stars - a status which, with varying degrees of success, they both still hold to this day.I have 3 more of Pialat's films in my "VHS To Watch" pile, albeit all in French without English Subtitles; due to this fact but also LOULOU'S oppressive realism - in spite of its undeniable artistic merit - I can't say that I'm in any particular hurry to check them out now...

Given the exhaustive and thoughtful review by the previous poster, I won't be redundant. This movie contains one of the best lines I've ever heard: As Nelly rides away with LouLou on his motorcycle, Andre poutfully spouts (rough english) "But you can't discuss books with him!"; Nelly replies "I don't discuss books, I read them!".Priceless.