6.6 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
A bored wife leaves her husband for an unemployed, petty criminal.
Starring: Isabelle Huppert, Gérard Depardieu, Guy Marchand, Frédérique Cerbonnet, Humbert BalsanForeign | 100% |
Drama | 97% |
Romance | 30% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.66:1
French: Dolby Digital 2.0
English
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Slipcover in original pressing
Region A (B, C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 3.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Note: This film is available as part of The Films of Maurice Pialat: Volume 1.
In my recent Death
Walks Twice: Two Films by Luciano Ercoli Blu-ray review, I mentioned how it’s likely that talking about giallo to even the most
ardent film buff would probably result in a response offering only one of two names, Dario Argento or Mario Bava. Similarly, if one were to ask
a film fan to name a French director whose work spanned the 1960s through the 1980s, my hunch is most folks would tend to gravitate
toward iconic names like Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut or Claude Chabrol. Nouvelle Vague so famously subsumed so much of
modern (meaning post-World War II) French cinema that some creatives (like Chabrol in fact) found themselves akin to square pegs being (or
at least attempted at being) thrust into round holes. Maurice Pialat is not a name known to many Western film lovers, even those
who consider themselves Francophiles, and it’s interesting to note that Pialat often works in a style that would frankly make him more at
home with his nearby European neighbors, the Italians, since Pialat frequently favors a neorealistic approach that is long on character, gritty
verisimilitude, and a sometimes lax approach toward traditional plot structure and three act “arcs”. Pialat also tends to eschew some of the
stylistic flourishes that populate the Nouvelle Vague catalog, especially in terms of editing. Instead of, well, Breathless cutting (sorry), Pialat often indulges in long, drawn out single takes that
allow his actors to fully explore the nuances of their characters, even if at times dialogue is fitfully minimal. It’s a technique that immediately
puts Pialat at odds with many of his (more) famous contemporaries, and may account at least in part for Pialat’s strange lack of recognition
on this side of the pond. Cohen Film Collection, quickly becoming a haven for cineastes (if it hasn’t already), is helping to ameliorate that
problem by releasing a trio of Pialat’s work spanning from 1974 to 1980, along with a revealing documentary about the director.
Loulou is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cohen Film Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.66:1. The press materials accompanying this release don't really give much information on the provenance of elements or masters, and so it's unclear whether this is culled from the same source as the French release Svet reviewed some time ago. In doing a completely non-scientific and cursory comparison of screenshots, it would appear that if this is not identical to the French release, it's at least very similar, though the overall color space of the Cohen release may be just a tad cooler (again this is based on comparisons only, I have not seen the French release). As Svet noted in his review, there appear to have been some at least slight denoising filters applied here, something that's especially noticeable in some of the early scenes in the club, where detail levels are a little "waxy" looking (there are actually a couple of moments that are undeniably out of focus, something that doesn't help matters). That said, there's a very noticeable grainfield that's especially apparent in the frequent darker, often blue tinged, sequences that take place either at night or in darkened environments. However, I did not notice any compression artifacts like Svet saw in the French release.
Perhaps surprisingly all three features in The Films of Maurice Pialat: Volume 1 sport Dolby Digital 2.0 mono tracks. The French release of Loulou, the only Pialat film in this set to have appeared previously on Blu-ray, featured a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono track. As longtime readers of my Cohen reviews know, I took the label to task for their earlier authoring of discs which tended to default to lossy Dolby Digital tracks rather than also included lossless tracks, but in this case there are no lossless tracks. That's ultimately not a huge deal, given the relatively small scale sonic ambitions of all three films, though it's at least arguable that the Mozart quotes in La Gueule ouverte might have gained a bit of "oomph" in a lossless setting. Dialogue and effects are both rendered cleanly on all three tracks, with no damage of any kind to warrant concern.
Perhaps because it seems more overtly histrionic than its siblings in The Films of Maurice Pialat: Volume 1, Loulou may end up feeling a bit less naturalistic than it might be if taken on its own, divorced from other Pialat offerings. It's still a riveting film, even if it's regularly rather disquieting. The performances are one of the chief calling cards here, helping the film to overcome some of its more overwrought elements. Recommended.
(Still not reliable for this title)
Les amants
1958
L'amour l'après-midi / Chloe in the Afternoon
1972
Anne and Muriel / Les deux Anglaises et le continent
1971
Les Salauds / Slipcover in Original Pressing
2013
1934
2011
La peau douce
1964
Jules et Jim
1962
Les enfants du paradis
1945
Conte d'hiver
1992
Prima della rivoluzione
1964
Madame de...
1953
Director's Cut
1986
Summer / Le rayon vert
1986
Les nuits de la pleine lune
1984
1984
2012
La belle et la bête
1946
Un beau soleil intérieur
2017
1966