Loulou (1980)

Thursday, January 24, 2019 @ 7:00 PM
Globe Cinema - 617 8th Ave SW, Calgary, AB
$12 General | $10 Members/Seniors/Students | $40 5-Pack Punch Pass | $99 Season Pass

Sunday, February 17, 2019 @ 2:00 PM
Central Library - 802 3rd St SE, Calgary, AB
FREE Admission (Part of our Library Series, which presents a free screening of the film along with a short lecture/guided discussion of its cultural and artistic significance.)

DIRECTED BY MAURICE PIALAT | FRANCE | 101 MINS.

Maurice Pialat is as highly-esteemed in certain circles as any French filmmaker of his generation. This is no small accomplishment considering that despite the fact he would not direct a feature film until well after the initial ascendency of the movement, he was in fact a little older that most of the directors comprising the vanguard of the French New Wave. Pialat steadfastly belonged to no movement, and his famous ill temper and antagonism endeared him to few. When his 1987 masterpiece Under the Sun of Satan won the Palme d’Or at Cannes that year, booing erupted at the awards gala, a response that almost certainly had more to do with Pialat himself than with the film under consideration. Of course, Pialat promptly upbraided the dissenters in turn. Because Pialat's films combine a certain quality of naturalism with exposition and performance styles that foreground the messy and dynamic rhythms that predominate in human affairs, his work is often compared with that of John Cassavettes. His 1980 film Loulou casts emergent stars Isabelle Huppert and Gérard Depardieu as ill-suited and combative lovers from what one might call opposite sides of the track. In collaborating with Pialat, Huppert is given the opportunity to bare her fangs a little, and show that she can give as good as she can get.

- Written by Jason Wierzba

SPOTLIGHT: ISABELLE HUPPERT

First appearing on screen in 1971, Isabelle Huppert has amassed more than 130 credits over the course of a remarkable and varied career. Indeed, she is considered by many to be the finest screen actress of her generation, having worked with many of the greatest directors of the postwar era. Whether in her famous extended collaborations with Claude Chabrol and Michael Haneke or in one-off partnerships with a who’s who of contemporary notables, Huppert is famous for her icy intelligence, intensity of affect, and subtlety of craft. Though her consistency is beyond dispute, it would be neglectful in the extreme to pigeonhole this fearless actress; while she can indeed be ruthless and inscrutable as she famously is in films such as Haneke’s The Piano Teacher, she is equally at home conducting amorous combat in Maurice Pialat’s Loulou or participating in the merry madcap antics of Serge Bozon’s Tip Top. Huppert, who has won and/or been nominated for innumerable awards, remains in a class of her own.

LIBRARY SCREENING SERIES @ NEW CENTRAL LIBRARY

In partnership with the Calgary Public Library, these free Sunday afternoon screenings are paired with a lecture and guided conversation about each film’s artistic and cultural impact. One film from each of our programming series will be featured, as well as a special Remembrance Day screening.

About Calgary Cinematheque

We are a non-profit film society dedicated to presenting significant, challenging, and essential works of cinema art in Calgary. During our season, which runs from October to April, we screen films weekly, in curated programs which situate each film in a thematic and historical context. We do this because we believe cinema is an essential form of artistic, social, and political expression. Audiences should be able to engage with a wide range of cinematic expression, not only with what is commercially viable. We believe in the power of sharing these experiences with other people in a theatrical setting and we strive to cultivate a community around that experience.  

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