Writer-director-star Julie Delpy’s sixth feature, “Lolo,” is a lightly likable, largely lowbrow slapstick comedy with dashes of eye-widening Oedipal terror, observing Violette, a hardworking single mother of forty (Delpy) who starts a new affair with a nice-guy “hick,” Jean-Rene (Dany Boon) while on a Biarritz spa vacation, before the hell-bent complication of her spoiled teenage son, Lolo (Vincent Lacoste) raises its curly head. There’s always a streak of potential malice and havoc in Delpy’s directorial output (“Two Days in Paris,” “Two Days In New York”) and certainly in her performances (especially the lovely outbursts of “Before Midnight”), and she offers full and troubling rein with the complications of her light-to-dark comedy, with a son who can turn from sunshine to sonofabitch on a centime. Best of all may be the sexually steeped badinage Violette and Ariane (Karin Viard) share: this is good, dirty stuff. 100m. (Ray Pride)
Ray Pride is Newcity’s Senior Editor and Film Critic. He is a contributing editor of Filmmaker magazine.
Ray’s history of Chicago Ghost Signs is planned for publication next year. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram. More photography on Instagram.
