Louloute | The scars of the past ★★★½

Dissipated teacher, Louise finds one day Dimitri, a childhood friend, new teacher at her school. This meeting plunges her back into her childhood memories of living on a dairy farm, within a loving family, but undermined by financial problems.

Andre Duchesne
The Press

If love is in the meadow, the life of a farmer is far from a dream. This is demonstrated by the fact that the day-to-day financial difficulties experienced by farmers are echoed not only in news bulletins, but also in the cinema.

Most recent example, Louloute is thus added to films such as the Quebec documentary Distress at the end of the row by Stéphane Gendron and French fiction In the name of the earth by Édouard Bergeron, both released in the summer of 2020.

If the lines of convergence are practically identical between Mr. Bergeron’s film and that of Hubert Viel, let’s say that Louloute stands out for its greater lightness, a well-being that finds its source in a loving and comforting family cocoon.

Admittedly, there are rough edges in the family of Louise, affectionately nicknamed Louloute, but calm always returns after a few storms…

Until the day when the father, Jean-Jacques (Bruno Clairefond), is tired of suffering the pressures inherent in the drop in the price of milk. That day, Louloute’s life changes forever.

The film is set in two eras: in Normandy, on the farm, in 1988, and today when Louise teaches in a school in an urban environment. The life of this adult Louise is inconstant and medicated. These passages in the present are rougher than those on the farm. She blames herself and does not forgive herself for what happened to her father.

Deconstructed, the story is however very well defined. At the beginning of the film, an oddly well-crafted ellipse catapults us from today to the past where most of the story takes place.

The young Alice Henry embodies this Louise of 1988 with great aplomb. On her angelic face pass all sorts of emotions nourished by events, sometimes banal, sometimes amusing, sometimes dramatic that she will experience or provoke.

With her acting, her facial expressions, her detentions at the right time, the young actress allows the viewer to put themselves in the shoes of a child and to feel, with her, the perception she has of her parents.

In the role of Isabelle, the mother of the clan, Laure Calamy is, as always, impeccable and convincing.

Both moving and very harsh, the final scene opens the door to the path that Louise will finally try to follow, that of preserving the tender moments of her childhood while evacuating the rest.

Indoors

Drama

Louloute

Hubert Viel

With Alice Henri, Laure Calamy and Bruno Clairefond

1:28

★★★½