Gilles Lellouche’s *Beating Hearts* (2024), an adaptation of Neville Thompson’s novel *Jackie Loves Johnser OK?*, is a sprawling, operatic crime-romance that swings ambitiously between tender intimacy and garish excess. This French-Belgian co-production, clocking in at a hefty 166 minutes, charts the star-crossed love of Jackie (Adèle Exarchopoulos) and Clotaire (François Civil) across decades, from their electric teenage romance to a fraught reunion after years of violence and separation. Lellouche’s direction, pulsating with restless energy, is the film’s lifeblood, but its uneven screenplay and overstretched ambition occasionally falter, leaving its emotional core both captivating and strained.

Lellouche’s visual audacity, paired with Laurent Tangy’s cinematography, is the film’s most striking triumph. The camera dances literally, with choreography by (La)Horde through vibrant, neon-soaked frames that evoke the 1980s and 1990s with nostalgic precision. Tangy’s use of split diopters, crash zooms, and dramatic lighting transforms northern France’s industrial docks into a mythic stage, where love and crime collide with Scorsese-inspired bravado. A standout sequence, an armed robbery bathed in golden hues, feels like a fever dream, its kinetic rhythm amplifying Clotaire’s descent into chaos. Yet, this stylistic bravura sometimes overshadows the narrative, as if Lellouche is more enamored with the film’s aesthetic than its emotional stakes.

The screenplay, co-written by Lellouche, Audrey Diwan, and Ahmed Hamidi, struggles to balance its sprawling timeline. The first half, centered on the teenage Jackie (Mallory Wanecque) and Clotaire (Malik Frikah), crackles with raw, youthful longing. Wanecque and Frikah are revelations, their guileless chemistry grounding the film’s heightened tone. However, the second act, with Exarchopoulos and Civil as adults, stumbles. Their chemistry feels muted, and the script leans on tired tropes of toxic masculinity and redemption that lack the nuance of the earlier scenes. Exarchopoulos, typically a force of nature, is underutilized, her Jackie reduced to a symbol of enduring love rather than a fully realized character.

Jon Brion’s score, interwoven with era-defining tracks from The Cure and Madonna, is a vibrant pulse, amplifying the film’s emotional swings without overwhelming them. Yet, the film’s length initially a four-hour cut whittled down betrays its indulgence, with subplots like Clotaire’s criminal entanglements feeling repetitive. *Beating Hearts* is a bold, messy symphony, thrilling when it embraces its wild romanticism but faltering when it lingers too long in its own excess. Its ambition is admirable, but a tighter focus could have made its heart beat truer.