Lola (1962)

In Nantes, a bored young man named Roland is letting life pass him by when he has a chance meeting with a woman he knew in his teens: she's Lola, now a cabaret dancer. She's also the devoted single mother of a young son, and she harbors the hope that his father, who deserted her during pregnancy, will return.Demy made this film as a tribute to German director Max Ophüls and it was described by Demy as a "musical without music". One can certainly see its musical qualities (and it is no surprise that Demy would go on to be known for musicals). The names of the film and title character were inspired by Josef von Sternberg's 1930 film Der blaue Engel, in which Marlene Dietrich played a burlesque performer named "Lola Lola." We also see how skilled Demy was with black and white. Now he is known not just for musicals, but for intense color. That is all but absent here (and in "Bay of Angels"), but still his light shines.

Lovingly restored under the supervision of his widow Agnes Varda, Jacques Demy's debut feature interweaves the lives and loves of its characters in beguiling fashion in this early New Wave classic.Michael Legrand's score is wonderfully atmospheric, too – perhaps only the French can mix Beethoven, Bach and Bebop – complementing Demy's direction and Coutard's camera work perfectly. Not surprisingly, the budget-minded result was a blessing in disguise, producing two BAFTA nominations.The success of Lola also inspired two semi-sequels – Umbrellas Of Cherbourg, reprising Roland's role, and The Model Shop in which Lola has moved to Los Angeles. In the hands of Demy, it's certainly a story worth telling. Instantly likable, with a considerable performance from Anouk Aimee, Lola is another standout work in the careers of Raoul Coutard and Jacques Demy. CS

The movie opens with a blond man wearing white and driving a white Cadillac convertible around the city. This, it turns out, is Michel, returning to Nantes after an absence of seven years. Roland (Marc Michel) is a restless young man carrying a heavy burden of ennui along with his charm and his youthful melancholy. He gets fired and drifts into a bookstore, where he meets a woman and her daughter Cecile, and offers to lend the girl his French-English dictionary. The name Cecile reminds him of a woman he once knew—and it turns out this woman is Lola (Anouk Aimee), a dancer in a local cabaret, dallying with a young blond American sailor, Franky, who reminds her of her lover Michel, father of Yvon, whom she refuses to believe will never return. Roland plans to go abroad, as a courier for some kind of shady deal, and finds he's in love with Lola, who does not love him. Still, she says wait two months while she goes off to dance in Marseilles, and we'll see. And just as she's said goodbye to all the girls in the cabaret, each of whom kisses the little boy goodbye, each calling him a different pet name—Michel arrives to deliver a surprising storybook ending. Little Cecile shares some rides with Franky at the fair, and the next morning runs away. Roland heads out to Johannesburg, even though the police have captured the smuggler who commissioned the trip.The movie seems to offer Lola as the answer to Roland's blankness. In a crucial scene toward the end, they walk slowly through the upper level of an arcade of shops. He tells her, "Life's like that. We're alone and we stay alone. But what counts is to want something no matter what the cost is. There's a bit of happiness in simply wanting happiness. I wanted nothing until I saw you again. But now..." He pauses. "You're right. It's great to be alive." In the first scenes of the film he complains of not having lived, but in the end he knows.Demy loved Nantes. It shows in the framing of city shots, and especially in the way the urban and industrial dinginess is balanced by crowded, human detail, and by people moving through the streets...

...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.