The actor and director Gilles Lellouche will present, in October 2024, the film Love phew (2024), after screenings at the Cannes Film Festival. With a prestigious cast including Adèle Exarchopoulos and François Civil, this new project promises to be one of the most exciting of the year.
In October 2004, the actor Gilles Lellouche passed for the first time on the other side of the camera revealing Narco, his first film as a director. Almost twenty years later, and after the good reception of his second feature film by critics and audiences The Big Bath (2018) – a real commercial success with 4.2 million admissions – he completed his film Love phew, which will be released in cinemas on October 16, 2024.
Love Wow: A Violent Romantic Comedy in Competition at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival
Inspired by the eponymous novel published by the Irish writer Neville Thompson in 2000, the new feature film by Gilles Lellouche – which was presented in competition at the Cannes Film Festival 2024 on May 23 – tells a love story against a backdrop of drug trafficking and petty theft between a bandit, played by the charismatic Francois Civil and his sassy fiancée, played by the excellent Adele Exarchopoulos.
The pitch for this fresco which spans several decades? “ The 80s, in the north of France. Jackie and Clotaire grew up between the high school benches and the port docks. She studies, he hangs out. And then their destinies intersect and it’s mad love. Life will try to separate them but nothing works, these two are like the two ventricles of the same heart…”
Great alchemy between Adèle Exarchopoulos and François Civil
Already seen as a pair in the film North Bac (2020), the two popular actors François Civil and Adèle Exarchopoulos should reveal a beautiful chemistry on the screen. Gilles Lellouche also explains that it was the latter who pushed him to choose them to play Jackie and Clotaire.
On the set of It’s up to youin Cannes, on May 22, 2004, he confided: “For the record, on North Bac, there was a scene where Adèle is married to Karim Leklou. She is pregnant, she is going to give birth, and during the scene I realized that she was clearly cheating on Karim Leklou live. She had completely forgotten that she was supposed to be married to Karim Leklou, she looked at François as if he were a God.”
An impressive cast with Vincent Lacoste and Raphaël Quenard
We will find in the credits of Love phew a large number of key actors of French cinema: Alain Chabat, Benoît Poelvoorde, Vincent Lacoste, Jean-Pascal Zadi, Élodie Bouchez, Karim Leklou, Raphaël Quenard or Anthony Bajon. But also two revelations: Mallaury Wanecque et Malik Frikahwho play the loving couple in their younger version.
Gilles Lellouche’s most ambitious film
In an interview given to Pierre Lescure in the show Nice gesture from October 15, 2023 on France 2, Gilles Lellouche revealed that Love phew would cross cinematographic genres, integrating “especially musical comedy. He also explained about his project, which was as romantic as it was ultra violent: “It’s a teenage movie, a love film.”
Filmed partly in Marseille and in the North (Dunkirk, Lille), the feature film also includes dance scenes choreographed by the collective (The)Hordewhich thus marks its first appearance in cinemas.
The soundtrack is one of the film’s greatest strengths. It features songs by Billy Idol, Prince, The Cure, Alphaville or EBTG in order to better take us through the ages.
Love phew (2024) is expected to be one of the most ambitious films of Gilles Lellouchewith an approximate duration of three hours and a budget of 32 million euros (according to Variety). And an atmosphere looking towards Quentin Tarantino et West Side Story. The latter’s great return as a director is therefore particularly scrutinized, especially when we know that the idea for this film came to him more than 17 years ago…
L’Amour ouf (2024) by Gilles Lellouche, with Adèle Exarchopoulos and François Civil, in cinemas on October 16, 2024.
