Themes: Love Triangles, Haunted By the Past, Unrequited Love
Main Cast: Anouk Aimée, Marc Michel, Jacques Harden, Elina Labourdette, Alan Scott, Annie Duperoux
Release Year: 1961
Country: FR/IT
Run Time: 90 minutes
Plot
Jacques Demy's auspicious debut -- "a musical without music" set in the port city of Nantes -- stars Anouk Aimée as the title character, a cabaret singer awaiting the return of Michel (Jacques Hardin), her long-absent lover and the father of her child. Michel went to America seven years ago and promised to return when he became rich. In Michel's absence, Lola is being courted by her childhood friend Roland (Marc Michel) and American sailor Frankie (Allan Scott). At some point, it seems that Lola will settle down with one of them, but her heart still belongs to Michel. The film is dedicated to Max Ophüls and the film title obviously alludes to Ophüls' Lola Montes as well as to the heroine of Josef Von Sternberg's The Blue Angel. Marc Michel makes a reference to his unrequited love towards Lola when he reappears in Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964). ~ Yuri German, All Movie Guide
Review
Jacques Demy was arguably the greatest romantic of the French New Wave, and Lola was one film in which he proved how vital both sides of that equation were to his vision. While Lola exists within the same workaday France of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut's early films, Raoul Coutard's cinematography allows Demy to find a beauty and poetry in the most ordinary circumstances; Coutard's moving camera brings the grace of a dancer to the film's visual proceedings, no matter how shabby some of the characters' circumstances may be. The narrative is so fluffy it threatens to blow away at any moment, but Demy primarily uses it as a device to focus on the emotional lives of his characters, and it is their common search for love that moves the story and keeps the film compelling. Demy's casting is nothing short of superb: Anouk Aimée is joyously radiant in the title role, and her every word and movement convey such a seductive charm that it's no wonder three men are vying for her hand; Marc Michel, Alan Scott, and Jacques Harden all resister in their own way as Lola's suitors; and Annie Duperoux is spot-on as Lola's teenage counterpart. Lola is a film whose goal is obviously to touch the heart rather than the mind, but Demy tells his simple story with such a rare blend of passion and intelligence that he's able to please the intellect as well. The result remains one of the most purely pleasurable products of the French Nouvelle Vague. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Lola, is a 1961 film, the debut film directed by Jacques Demy as a tribute to director Max Ophüls[1] and is described by Demy as a "musical without music"[2]. Anouk Aimée starred in the title role. The film was restored and re-released by Demy's widow, French filmmaker Agnès Varda.
Lola takes place in the Atlantic coastal city of Nantes, France. A young man, Roland Cassard (Marc Michel, who later reprises the role of Roland in the later Demy film, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) is letting his life waste away until he has a chance encounter with Lola (Aimée), a woman he used to know as a teenager before World War II and who is now a cabaret dancer. Though Roland is quite smitten with her, Lola is preoccupied with her former lover, Michel, who abandoned her and her seven-year-old son years before. Also vying for Lola's heart is an American sailor, Frankie (Alan Scott), whose affection Lola does not return.
Struggling for work, Roland gets involved in a diamond-smuggling plot with the local barber. Crossing paths with Roland is a young teenage girl, Cécile (Annie Dupéroux), whose life in many ways mirrors that of Lola's (whose actual name is Cécile also). In the end, against all odds, Michel returns to Nantes for Lola, apparently very successful and hoping to marry her, just as she is leaving for another job in Marseille and Roland is also leaving town. Their paths do not cross.
Awards and nominations
1963 BAFTA - Nominated for "Best Film from any Source" and "Best Foreign Actress" for Anouk Aimée.
