Beating Hearts (French: L'Amour ouf) is a 2024 romantic drama film directed by Gilles Lellouche from a screenplay he co-wrote with Ahmed Hamidi and Audrey Diwan, based on the 1997 novel Jackie Loves Johnser OK?

The ensemble cast includes Mallory Wanecque, Malik Frikah, Alain Chabat, Benoît Poelvoorde, Vincent Lacoste, Jean-Pascal Zadi, Élodie Bouchez, Karim Leklou, Raphaël Quenard and Anthony Bajon.

On 2 September 2013, Gilles Lellouche said in an interview for the French radio station France Inter that he was going to direct an adaptation of Neville Thompson's 1997 Irish novel Jackie Loves Johnser OK?.

[18] According to Cineuropa in an article published on 26 March 2024 citing CNC (National Centre for Cinema and the Moving Image)'s 2023 report, the total budget was €35.7 million.

[24] The full cast (Mallory Wanecque, Malik Frikah, Alain Chabat, Benoît Poelvoorde, Vincent Lacoste, Jean-Pascal Zadi, Karim Leklou, Raphaël Quenard and Anthony Bajon) was revealed on 21 May 2023,[6] when producer Hugo Sélignac shared on Instagram the poster for the film that was featured on the cover of that day's issue of the French magazine Le Film français.

[27][22] Filming took place in several regions of France such as Villeneuve-d'Ascq,[28] Dunkirk, Lille, Douai, Valenciennes, Cambrai, Avesnes-sur-Helpe, Calais, Saint-Omer, Béthune, Lens, Arras, Boulogne-sur-Mer and Montreuil-sur-Mer,[29] and at the Institut Saint-Henri de Comines in Comines-Warneton, Belgium.

[45] Adam Sanchez of GQ France wrote; "Gilles Lellouche disappoints with his symphony of big muscles and broken hearts".

(Those who saw Lellouche's previous feature, Sink or Swim, may recall a similar superficiality in the writing of that film's principal character of color.)".

[47] Tim Grierson of Screen Daily praised the performances of Malik Frikah and Mallory Wanecque as the teenagers Clotaire and Jackie, but also criticized the lack of chemistry between François Civil and Adèle Exarchopoulos as the adult versions of the two leads: "Unfortunately, once the couple is reunited in their 20s, the film's buzzy high dissipates.

"[33] Writing for the American website The Playlist, Gregory Ellwood gave the film a C- score, stating: "there is little Lellouche does over the first hour to portray the teenage romance between the two as life-changing.

There are recurring dance numbers (sorta), a cringe-worthy montage giving cliche '90s American hip-hop music video, and a prelude that turns out to be utterly pointless.

"[48] Jordan Mintzer of The Hollywood Reporter called the film "overblown and downright vulgar at times," and wrote: "If you took Magnolia, Goodfellas, Boyz n the Hood and perhaps Claude Lelouch's A Man and a Woman, plugged them all into the latest version of ChatGPT and asked it to spit out a brand new film, you could wind up with something like Gilles Lellouche's (no relation to Claude) swooning French crime romance, Beating Hearts (L'Amour ouf)", and also that "Clotaire and Jackie also come across as caricatures of the French working-class, unable to control themselves or their emotions because that's apparently what working-class kids are like.

[49] Writing for the American website First Showing, Alex Billington said: "Putting two good-looking people into your movie doesn't automatically mean they have chemistry nor does it make their love story fascinating.

"[51] For Juliette Hochberg of the French magazine Marie Claire, "Beating Hearts is not a musical comedy, as it was announced here and there, but the precise work of the sound, even more of the silence, offers a total spectacle.

"[52] Samuel Douhaire of the French magazine Télérama wrote that "Lellouche wants to do Paul Thomas Anderson, Martin Scorsese, John Woo and Jacques Demy at the same time – That's a lot for a single film, even if it lasts almost three hours, especially when you don't yet have the talent of either, and his very sentimental vision of love is that of an eternal teenager.

From this interminable and, ultimately, exhausting hodgepodge, we will nevertheless save the first hour, carried by the young and formidable Mallory Wanecque (discovered at the end of 2022 in The Worst Ones) and Malik Frikah.

And a beautiful dialogue sequence, tender then tense, between Jackie, Clotaire and a contemptuous supermarket manager, where, for once, Gilles Lellouche refrains from being smart with his camera.

"[53] For Céline Rouden of the French newspaper La Croix, "nothing is right in this film which pushes all the sliders to the limit: saturated colours, omnipresent music, non-existent dialogues and affected staging whose overexcited energy poorly masks the absence of purpose, when it does not refer to a simplistic morality", [...] "A French Romeo + Juliet (1996) which undoubtedly seeks to ogle Baz Luhrmann and his excesses but produces only a pale imitation and even sinks into ridicule.

"[55] Gautier Roos wrote for the French website Chaos Reign that "nothing in this film justifies the money spent on the screen, nor this duration of 2h46, nor the epic breath that this story of love prevented by destiny would like to embody.

"[56] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film 2 out of 5 stars and wrote that it "aims for a Springsteenesque blue-collar energy but buckles under the weight of its own naivety.

Fabien Lemercier of Cineuropa wrote: "This fireworks display with a €35 million budget is the opposite of finesse and will undoubtedly find its audience thanks to a fittingly aggressive marketing campaign, but it would have been much more reasonable not to launch it in competition at the 77th Cannes Film Festival where even if masters of cinema can sometimes get tired, a certain artistic excellence is still de rigueur.