Title: Lolo
Director: Julie Delpy
Starring: Julie Delpy, Dany Boon, Vincent Lacoste, Karin Viard.
Woody Allen in the US and Nanni Moretti in Italy are an example of filmmakers who write their scripts, direct them and interpret them. Julie Delpy, in the tough man’s world of motion pictures, embodies a cinematic female superhero from the land of liberty, equality and brotherhood. Her talent as an actress emerged through Richard Linklater’s triptych (‘Before Sunrise,’ ‘Before Sunset,’ ‘Before Midnight’); and she has been just as brilliant as a director (‘2 Days in Paris,’ ‘The Countess,’ ‘2 Days in New York’).
Delpy returns behind and in front of the camera with a script she co-wrote with Eugénie Grandval. ‘Lolo’ – presented at the 2015 Venice Film Festival – is a sharp romantic comedy, about the chic Parisian sophisticated Violette (Julie Delpy), who meets life-loving IT geek Jean-René (Dany Boon). Against all odds, there’s a real chemistry between them and at the end of the summer, Jean René wastes no time in joining his beloved in Paris. But their different social backgrounds and her 19 year old son Lolo won’t make things easy.
The Chaplinesque body-language humour – combined with witty dialogues, that caustically depict the life of repressed forty-something year old women – is a bombshell. Delpy and Karin Viard speak about sex in incredibly blunt words, which is quite rare in French movies, but they are never vulgar.
Delpy explains that she was influenced by her childhood days, growing up reading satirical magazines, like Charlie Hebdo and Hara Kiri. In ‘Lolo’ the French filmmaker brings this incredibly refreshing crudeness, which is clever and funny and fearlessly breaks the boundaries of political correctness and bigotry.
Technical: B
Acting: B
Story: B-
Overall: B
Written by: Chiara Spagnoli Gabardi
