L’Innocent (The Innocent), the family drama by Louis Garrel

Picture of the film L'INNOCENT (THE INNOCENT) by Louis GARREL © Les Films des Tournelles

Director and actor Louis Garrel has shown us the full range of his talent in the Official Selection ever since 2006. An actor that year in Les Amandiers by Valeria Bruni-Tedeschi, he has also worked behind the camera ever since his first film, Les deux amis (Two Friends) in 2015. Following La Croisade, his narrative film about the environment in 2021, he now presents L’Innocent as a director, his new feature film Out of Competition.

Whether In Competition or Out of Competition, Louis Garrel amuses with his extreme levity. An inspired singer in Les Chansons d'amour, bashful lover in Un château en Italie (2013), the paramour of the fashion designer in Saint Laurent (2014), an over-the-top Jean-Luc Godard in Le Redoutable (2017), and theater director in Les Amandiers (Forever Young), he embodies characters at a personal level.

After La Croisade (The Crusade) in 2021, his ecology-themed film shot with Laeticia Casta, Louis Garrel tries his hand at a new genre with L’Innocent (The Innocent), a romantic thriller. This touchingly offbeat and funny film juxtaposes various themes, oscillating joyously between a romantic comedy and a heist movie. As in his three previous films, the actor-director draws on his own life story to tell that of Abel, who opposes his mother Sylvie's marriage to a convict.

Alongside his co-screenwriter Tanguy Viel, Louis Garrel has taken on the role of Abel to create a multicolored work of self-fiction boasting an enticing choice of actors. Roschdy Zem, in the shoes of the romantic convict, Anouk Grinberg (Sylvie), who is making her big comeback, and Noémie Merlant, who draws upon his undeniable comic potential as the best friend of the actor-director. A zany, light-hearted rush.