L'Amour ouf is an upcoming French musical romantic comedy film written and directed by Gilles Lellouche from a screenplay co-written by Audrey Diwan, Ahmed Hamidi and Julien Lambroschini, based on the 1997 Irish novel Jackie Loves Johnser OK? by Neville Thompson. It stars François Civil and Adèle Exarchopoulos. 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. 

The film will be released in France by StudioCanal on 16 October 2024.

Plot
The story spans 20 years and begins in the North East of France with two teenagers who fall madly in love, a girl from an upper-middle-class family and a boy from a working-class family. Their love story is quickly doomed to failure when he ends up becoming a criminal and spends 12 years in prison.

Cast
 François Civil
 Adèle Exarchopoulos
 Mallory Wanecque
 Malik Frikah
 Alain Chabat
 Benoît Poelvoorde
 Vincent Lacoste
 Jean-Pascal Zadi
 Élodie Bouchez
 Karim Leklou
 Raphaël Quenard
 Anthony Bajon

Production

Development
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?. Lellouche described the project as "an ultra-violent romantic comedy". It was actor Benoît Poelvoorde who gave Lellouche a copy of the book and told him he should adapt it into a film. Lellouche fell in love with the story and started writing the screenplay together with Poelvoorde, but it did not work out, so Lellouche decided to continue writing alone. Lellouche then co-wrote the screenplay with Audrey Diwan, Ahmed Hamidi and Julien Lambroschini, who started writing it in 2019.

On 9 July 2021, a teaser poster for the film describing it as "an ultra-violent musical and romantic comedy" with a 2023 release date on it was unveiled in a special issue of Variety at the Marché du Film during the Cannes Film Festival, but the cast was still unknown. 

The film is a co-production between Chi-Fou-Mi Productions and Trésor Films with a budget of €32 million ($34 million), marking it as StudioCanal's biggest investment in a French-language film. Producers Alain Attal and Hugo Sélignac described L'Amour ouf as "a love rollercoaster, mixing love, violence and dance." The dance collective (La)Horde was hired to create three dances for the film. The score will feature 1980s and 1990s songs from artists such as The Cure, New Order, Madonna, Nas, and Jay-Z. The film is set in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

Casting
François Civil and Adèle Exarchopoulos were announced in the lead roles in a casting call published on 7 February 2023, which also announced that filming would take place between May and September 2023. Lellouche had previously co-starred with Civil and Exarchopoulos in the 2021 film BAC Nord, whose screenplay was co-written by Audrey Diwan. 

Élodie Bouchez was announced in the cast on 28 March 2023. 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, 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.

Filming
Filming began on 9 May 2023. The 18-week shoot is expected to wrap in September 2023. Filming will take place in several regions of France such as Villeneuve-d'Ascq, Dunkirk, Lille, Douai, Valenciennes, Cambrai, Avesnes-sur-Helpe, Calais, Saint-Omer, Béthune, Lens, Arras, Boulogne-sur-Mer and Montreuil-sur-Mer, and at the Institut Saint-Henri de Comines in Comines-Warneton in Belgium.

Release
L'Amour ouf became the first film to be co-acquired by Canal Plus, Netflix and France Télévisions.

StudioCanal will release the film in France on 16 October 2024.

References

External links
 

2024 romantic comedy films
2020s musical films
2020s French films
2020s French-language films
French romantic comedy films
French musical comedy films
2020s romantic musical films
Films based on Irish novels
Films directed by Gilles Lellouche
Films with screenplays by Gilles Lellouche
Films with screenplays by Audrey Diwan
Films shot in France
Films shot in Belgium
Films set in the 1970s
Films set in the 1980s
Films set in the 1990s
StudioCanal films