Lola

Director
Jacques Demy, Marc Michel
Cast
Anouk Aimée
Date
1961
Duration
85 Minutes
Cert.
PG

Romantic Trilogy, Part 1

Anouk Aimée stars as Lola, a vivacious cabaret dancer who has a chance encounter with Roland, a man who first fell under Lola's spell before the war, when he was a teenager. Still in awe of Lola and her majestic beauty, Roland is not the only male in her life; an American sailor and another lover with whom she had a child are all part of the crowd she draws in.

The director, who married fellow New Wave film-maker Agnes Varda, described the film as "a musical without music", and indeed the way in which the film is shot has its own musicality. It's no surprise, then, that the film is dedicated to the great French director Max Ophüls (Letter From an Unknown Woman, La Ronde), whose famed fluid camera movements are alluded to here by veteran New Wave cinematographer Raoul Coutard (Breathless).

Lola, along with Demy's other celebrated films, recalls the best work of the American musical master Vincente Minnelli (An American in Paris, Gigi), sharing his flamboyant approach to cinema, in all its fantastical Technicolor glory. The American influence is further suggested by Michel Legrand's (Cléo from 5 to 7, La Baie des Anges, Vivre sa vie) grand, romantic score, which wonderfully seeps into each scene, anticipating the director's subsequent musicals.

Anouk Aimée (Prêt-à-Porter, La Dolce Vita, 8 ½) is fabulous as the cabaret dancer at the core of the love quadrangle, creating magic of the kind more commonly associated with the golden years of the Hollywood studio system. Alongside Aimée is Marc Michel, who turns in an equally great performance in both this film and Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.

Lola is perhaps most memorable as a poignant love story where different paths collide, as well as for the indelible close ups of Anouk Aimée singing into the camera, and the beautiful pans of Coutard's camera across a French coastal town.

Cinémoi celebrates Lola as part of a small season of films by the great director, followed by The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967).