Lola

The work of Jacques Demy (1931-90) has been called more approachable than that of many other French New Wave directors. His most famous and beloved film is most likely the 1964 musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg which is the second film in Demy's informal "romantic trilogy" that was started in 1961 with his feature debut Lola and finished in 1967 with The Young Girls of Rochefort. While Lola is less melodramatic than Umbrellas, it is an interesting portrayal of complexities of romantic love in its own right.

The story is set in Demy's hometown of Nantes near the Atlantic coast. A daydreaming young man Roland Cassard (Marc Michel) drifts from job to job until suddenly stumbling upon a cabaret dancer called Lola (Anouk Aimée), a childhood friend of his. Lola has a young son and gets a lot of attention from men, including an American Navy sailor named Frankie (Alan Scott), but only longs for her first true love Michel who left the town when she was pregnant and hasn't shown up since. Besides his newfound infatuation with Lola, Cassard also becomes acquainted with a single mother Mrs. Desnoyers (Elina Labourdette) and her teenage daughter Cécile (Annie Duperoux) who strongly resembles a younger Lola.

While watching the film, it soon becomes evident Demy is more interested in atmosphere than a strictly defined plot. The streets and locations of the coastal city of Nantes make a very pleasant-looking environment for the romantic feelings that are thrown around, sometimes requited, sometimes not. The effect of the not very distant World War 2 is still evident in the city: American soldiers frequent cabaret bars, people have their missing loved ones in fresh memory and many have had their lives changed significantly. Times can be tough for a dreamer like Cassard who appears to get involved in a shady smuggling operation, thus starting a crime subplot in the movie, but again, only feelings are what really matter in the world of Lola.

I liked especially the black and white photography of the street views as well as the cheery songs at Lola's cabaret bar. The use of music in general is pretty varied in the movie: a recurring piece is the beautiful Allegretto part from Beethoven's 7th Symphony, but the hectic jazz tunes never feel out of place either. With regard to the acting, the heart and soul of the movie is of course the eponymous Lola whose lively, emotional and energetic antics are memorably brought to life by Anouk Aimée. The young girl Cécile is also well portrayed by Annie Duperoux in her first (and penultimate) role. The men are hopelessly overshadowed by the women, although certain amount of detachedness suits Michel's character well. Alan Scott's heavily accented French (perhaps phonetically memorized?) doesn't sound very convincing though, considering Frankie's somewhat fluent grasp of grammar and casual conversation.

I am sure Lola will feel the most powerful to those who have been in love themselves and know the feeling of first love that is remembered even after many years. Demy's film seems to suggest such a feeling is something that life cyclically repeats for so many people, but to each person it is once new. Well, that is what I got out of it anyway but in any case, I would say Lola is recommended viewing for Nouvelle Vague beginners and anyone who likes The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. There may not be as much singing in Lola (described by Demy as "a musical without music") as in Umbrellas, but the two films have a lot in common, such as the theme of lasting love and the Roland Cassard character. Fans of more atmospheric romance cinema should also give Lola a look.

This director is ROMANTIC! I think he rightly shows the astonishing contrast between love being generated by complete chance and fleeting encounter - with its lasting consequence and possibly enduring devotion. I just loved it.

One of the things that is so winning about this movie (also true of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) is how very modest the characters -- and the movie - are.

The characters are sincere - if they lie, they apologize later - and unafraid to say when they are greatly moved -- and when they aren't.

I think both movies wonderfully portray mother - daughter relationships - and both are quite sympathetic to men as well as women.

How often do you see movies that show the truth of men's emotions wracked by romantic feelings (rather than solely lust) - sometimes returned and sometimes not? Very seldom.

In some ways, I prefer Lola to Umbrellas because the plot is more ingenious, the vividly drawn characters more numerous - so there is more to engross one. (On the other hand, by concentrating on just the love for one woman, Umbrellas creates an agony in the viewer that is more powerful than any feeling in Lola).

Just see it - and you'll see many disparate pieces pull together in a wonderfully satisfying, utterly charming, wonderful romantic tale.

Lola and Umbrellas make me anxious to see the Young Girls of Rochefort.

It's impossible to talk about "lola" without mixing ideas and, in most cases, without getting speechless. It's a movie that meets everything what a movie has to meet. Poetry, glamour, great music, dazzling photography, daily and real dialogs; but overall, "Lola" is the master of human sensibility. And that is what is "Lola", a story which is focused on sensations, love and hopes. Maybe I'm a bit exaggerated and little objective when i talk about this masterpiece, but when I see Lola crying because of Roland's happiness watching him through a the window of a bar, i can't avoid thinking "this is life, a mixture of magic and pain" Demy is a poet. He could collect poetry and reality, resulting in charming, elegant and fresh movie. Watch Lola without expecting anything, but be sure that, at the same moment you turn off the TV after watching it, you will be, as me, speechless. Just plenty of emotions.

Demy's films of the 1960s laid out the whimsies, joys and terrors of the Nouvelle Vague generation, not through the parodic dissections of Godard, nor the eerie doublings of Resnais or early Varda, nor the rebellions of Truffaut's 400 Blows, not through encounters with malign authority, but through the networks of friendship, love and relation more often the terrain on which life is explicitly lived and experienced. As a kind of try-out for the musicals-shot as a conventional narrative film without sung only because of a lack of resources, but with a glorious Legrand soundtrack anyway-Lola is at once more sombre/sober and equally preoccupied with the same shadings of mood, somewhere between a feminist, or at least non-misogynist portrayal of an independent woman not subject to judgment, and the stereotypical figures that populate heterosexual romance. The use of locations as repositories of memory and of their own mythology-Roland's return in 'Parapluies' or the much darker return to the arcades in 'Un Chambre En Ville'-begins here. The Demy creed: "There's a bit of happiness in simply wanting happiness". It's hard not to get sucked in.

...You would know that,in Chicago,there are no sailors but gangsters.That's what the mother tells her daughter who became friend with an American!This is one of the funniest lines of a wonderful movie.

There's a tight connection between "Lola" and Demy's following movie "les parapluies de Cherbourg":

-Lola is an unmarried mother,Genevieve becomes one too. Both are waiting for a lover,in a harbor .(Nantes for Lola,Cherbourg for Genevieve)

-Marc Michel's character,Roland appears in both movies!In love with Lola,he is rejected.In "les parapluies",his memories come back for a very short while: a flashback displays pictures of Nantes,where Lola's story took place .And he told Genevieve's mother about his long lost love.

-In "Lola" ,Roland wants to marry the heroine and to become her(not his) son's father.In "les parapluies",he marries Genevieve and becomes her (not his) son's father.

-Both movies display ordinary people,whose ordinary life is shown with emphasis but not without taste ,as if all this were written in verse.What's the matter if "Lola" is a "normal" movie and "les parapluies " an entirely sung one.Demy's touch makes both winners.

-Both movies -and it was to continue with "les demoiselles de Rochefort" and the marvelous "Donkey Skin"- favor the scenery:the black and white shots in "Lola" are at least as unreal and as dreamlike as the vivid colors in "les parapluies"(influenced by American musicals of the fifties)

-Both movies feature families without a father figure:the mother and the daughter I mention above ,we find them back in "les parapluies.." and even later in "les demoiselles de Rochefort".But in this latter work,it's the mother who's an unmarried mother.

"Les parapluies de Cherbourg" is praised and loved everywhere,but "Lola"'s still crying to be seen.Like Roland ,Lola will come back in another Demy's movie ,made in America: "Model Shop"(1968).Leonard Maltin says that "Demy's eye for LA is striking ,but overall feel to story is ambiguous".It's not on a par with Lola,though.