User reviews

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.

Jacques Demy's effervescent romance is one of the best and most enduring examples of the stylistic explosion since called the French New Wave, but compared to Resnais' often-tortured exposition and Godard's turgid socio-political cul-de-sacs this playful look at the mysteries of first love is alive with an almost irresistible vitality. Demy pursues with tongue-in-cheek determination the idea that life can be a series of happy accidents, weaving several interlocked plot threads into a delicate web of chance and coincidence to illustrate the casual symmetry of life and love. At the heart of the film is a young cabaret dancer waiting (against reason) for her American sailor to return, whose sometimes sad, sometimes comic story is oddly echoed in the lives of everyone around her. It's as if the world were an endless progression of dancers and sailors, destined to mingle and mix in a never-ending attempt to rekindle that first, unforgettable spark of passion.

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.

LOLA is a wonderful movie. It may not have the intensity of THE UMBRELLAS or even YOUNG GIRLS, but it is the beginning of the Demy sensibility that came to fruition in those films. The difference is that in LOLA he takes more from the contemporary films scene, bowing to his peers as well as his predecessors. Despite criticisms, the effect of the film, its music and playful qualities, its excellent acting and camera, still puts contemporary films to shame.

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.

I watched a documentary miniseries by the French filmmaker Agnes Varda recently, and in it, Lola was discussed quite a lot. Lola was made by Jacques Demy, who Varda was married too. As such, I've had Lola by The Kinks stuck in my head for two days because of this movie's title, so I felt like I had to watch it to get it unstuck.

The only other film of Demy's I've seen is The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, which I appreciated but wasn't a huge fan of. It was a musical where every line of dialogue was sung, but the problem was none of it was particularly engaging to listen to (just actors sort of sing-speaking for 90 minutes). At least it looked nice, and I can say the same thing about Lola.

Overall though, I think I liked this less than Umbrellas of Cherbourg. It's fine, and there's nothing bad about it (there's a few memorable moments and it's overall well-made), but I wasn't very interested in what was going on, with a number of scattered characters that felt as though they were cut to at random, and the style, visuals, and music only went so far in keeping me interested.

I may just not connect with Demy's style, but I won't give up on him just yet. I don't tend to have the same problem with Varda's films, as they usually have a more tangible emotional impact to them (plus they always look great).

I can't say Lola's truly bad, but I can't say it did much for me either, sadly.

...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.

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.

The modern mainstream movie-goer will probably react negatively toward this wonderful little film, an early Demy masterpiece. Meetings and love, what I like most in life in this moment, are the most wonderful aspects of human life. It takes longer for some people to realize this. Maybe if they fall in love they will understand what surely brings happiness, and it is not about things or stuff. Simple meetings between people. Human interaction. I miss nothing in this film, it has the elements I want from a movie. The score is wonderful; Mozart, Legrande (who uses the same tune in Parapluies de Cherbourg) and especially Beethoven's 7th symphony that is well fit in the finale. Maybe what I like so much about movies is the combination of photo and music. And the photo by Raoul Coutard (my favorite cinematographer) is amazing. The beautiful and detailed outdoor scenes, the light, the compositions.

The little affair between the American sailor and the 14-year old French girl would probably be classed as soft pedophilia today, btw.

5/5

Jacques Demy makes his feature length debut in a solidly crafted drama that signaled great things to come. Demy is able to craft enjoyable characters in a film that interconnects their stories in a rather beautiful way. Thematically, our characters seek purpose, with themselves and with one other. The way Demy is able to interconnect and mirror these stories is very well done. Add to that some nice black & white camera work and you have film that demonstrates Demy's unique style and sets him apart from other directors.

This film, which sets up many of the story lines and themes that are taken up in "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg," is as charming and seductive as the latter, even in black and white and without the musical numbers. In fact, the black and white is quite spectacular--the camera loves Anouk Aimée in particular--and the film seems as if it is going to turn into a musical at almost every moment. While watching the film, one thrills to see the first statement of director Demy's beautiful and poignant cinematic universe. "Lola" is at once a splendid homage to the classic Hollywood film, and at the same time, through its expression of complex, mostly tragic themes, and quotidian--if not ugly--realities, something much more intriguing than a conventional film romance. Yet, such harshness is tempered, even transformed, by the dreamscape of cinema, both in what is depicted on-screen as well as through the characters' own processes of dreaming. You needn't resist the temptation to call it sublime.

Anouk Aimée had been in movies for over a decade by the time that she appeared in "Lola", but this movie really showed moviegoers what she's made of. We see here the relationship between a French cabaret dancer (who, unlike the similarly named protagonist of the Kinks' song, both looks and talks like a woman) and two men: a Frenchman whom she knew years earlier, and a US sailor.

A previous reviewer noted similarities between this movie and Jacques Demy's later "Umbrellas of Cherbourg". True though that may be, this is the more interesting one: the subtlety, the camerawork and the complex characters make this a true example of highbrow cinema. I hope to see more of Demy's movies.

I guess that if I were to further reference the Kinks' song, I could say:

I saw the ma'amoiselle dancing on the stage I asked her her name and in her Gallic voice she said Lola L-O-L-A Lola Lo-lo-lo-lo-Lola

The French film Lola (1961) was written and directed by the great Jacques Demy. It stars Anouk Aimée as Lola. Lola is referred to as a "dancer" or cabaret singer, but she isn't exactly that. She works in a dance hall, where sailors go to dance with the young women who work there. It's never clear to me whether prostitution is involved. Yes--Lola will let a sailor share her bed on occasion, but I don't think money changed hands.

Two men are in love with Lola, although it's never clear whether this is love or lust. Meanwhile, Lola has spent seven years waiting for her true love to appear. She's raising their son while she waits.

There's a subplot about a somewhat older woman, who is a widow raising her adolescent daughter. Madame Desnoyers is played by Elina Labourdette. Her daughter Cécile is portrayed by Annie Duperoux. Labourdette was a well-known French star. However, as far as I can tell, this was the only movie in which Duperoux appeared. (That's too bad, because she was a good actress.)

Many women in the movie are waiting for a man or the right man, or both. I found this tedious and, frankly, boring. Wait, wait, wait. Hope, hope, hope. Sigh, sigh, sigh.

Director Demy loved to direct beautiful women as his stars. Besides Aimée, he directed Catherine Deneuve, Françoise Dorléac, Dominique Sanda, Danielle Darrieux, and Jeanne Moreau. OK--they are all delightful to look at, but does the quality of Demy's films match the physical beauty of his stars?

In my opinion, sometimes yes, sometimes no. In this case, it would be no. However, I'm in the minority here, because Lola carries a very strong IMDb rating of 7.6. I didn't think it was that good--I gave it a 7.

There are a few love stories in the movie 'Lola' made in 1961 by Jacques Demy, but also around this movie. Made in 1961, it was the director's first feature film, which a few years later would direct 'Les parapluies de Cherbourg' and then 'Les demoiselles de Rochefort' and contained many of the hallmarks of an original and charming cinematic personality, an elegant romanticism, sincerity and ingenuity. But the story of the film itself has an emotional late episode. The original negatives were lost, and when it came time to recondition and digitize the film, the restorers had to resort to a copy in the archives of British cinema. The operation was performed by director Agnès Varda, the widow of Jacques Demy, a few years after his death. Demy's film, youthful and full of love, has been resuscitated and can now be seen and experienced by the new generations of cinema lovers due to the devotion and professionalism of the other great film director who was his wife.

The heroes and heroines of the film do not sing yet, as the heroes and heroines of the director's later films would do, but they express their feelings spontaneously and with volubility. That would be a recipe for failure in modern cinema, and Demy was in the minority or even a unique exception among the directors of her time - but with him the charm and the sincerity of the heroes work wonderfully. The story takes place in a French city on the Atlantic coast in the decade after the end of WWII. The heroes belong to the generation whose dreams were cut off by the war: the cabaret singer who tries to keep her honor intact while raising a child and who copntinues to dream about the man who left her, the young man whose war experience changed the course of his life and cut his spirits, the widow who grows her teenager adaughter who is about to become a future Lolita (like Nabukov's novel), the marines soldier from Chicago looking for adventures and memories for a life in the arms of beautiful French women. We are dealing with a whole world, a gallery of characters who live situations that are not very easy but which are approached and described with the lightness and exuberance of a suite of minuets. As in the French baroque 'social dance' with popular origins in the 17th century, the partners in the pairs change from time to time. The classical musical background (mostly Beethoven) envelops the whole atmosphere, and the black and white cinematography reminds that the action takes place in the decade before the film's release.

The two lead roles are undertaken two wonderful young actors who followed very different career paths. Anouk Aimée creates a role in the tradition of femme fatale cabaret singers embodied over two decades before by Marlene Dietrich. Her partner in the film is Marc Michel, in the role of a disillusioned and disoriented young man, to whom the reunion with the woman who had been his first love seems to give the chance of a new beginning. 'First love is the strongest' could be the motto of the film, but there are also situations in which the first loves are not shared. Marc Michel acts great, he also had a physique that reminded me of Matt Damon half a century later. Where did he disappear after this movie? Examining his filmography we can see that most of his subsequent choices were commercial action movies, increasingly weird ones. An unfulfilled promise in a generation where competition was fierce. His performance in this film remains perhaps the best role of his career, contributing to this elegant film about the 1950s France seen through the prism of three days of romantic encounters by the sea. Only the ending can easily disappoint, the inspiration seems to have abandoned the screenwriter, who does not seem to have found the most suitable final tones to conclude his minuet.

Roland Cassard (Marc Michel) is a bored young man with no ambitions. He runs into his ex Cecile (Anouk Aimée) who is now a cabaret dancer with the stage name Lola and a young son. Roland is still in love with her but she is not. Roland encounters Madame Desnoyers and her teen daughter Cecile in a store. Desnoyers invites him to Cecile's 14th birthday. He also gets involved in a smuggling scheme to South Africa. American sailor Frankie is taken with both Ceciles.

It's strange. Anouk feels so much older than Marc. It must be his immature character. It's aimless youth that is reserved more for one's early twenties but he is almost thirty. It's hard to root for him or feel for him in any way. Of course, age is somewhat an issue with this movie. The younger Cecile smokes but it's her relationship with Frankie which is the more disturbing. This might be a more interesting movie about her. I'm less interested in Roland.

My all-time favourite. Must have watched it a hundred times, sometimes 4 times in a week, and I never can get tired of it. It's just cinematographic perfection. And I don't have words for Anouk Aimee as Lola. Magic ?

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.

I have just watched Demy's great masterpiece ' Lola ', and it is a deceptively joyful film. Each character has their intense feelings of love, and each in their own way has to leave some of their illusions behind them. Watch Demy's ' Model Shop ' and see what happens to Lola in America. It is not as perfectly filmed as ' Lola ' but it is very good indeed. Lola dances and gives herself to men, but she is ' faithful ' to the Frenchman she loved 7 years before and waits for his return. This story is intertwined with other stories, but no spoilers and a friend who watched it with me asked, ' what is this film really about ? ' and all I could say was, ' it is better to live with illusions than without them. ' Watch out too for a fairground scene where a 14 year old girl falls in love with a sailor ( just as Lola did and she has the same name, Cecile, as the 14 year old, ' and if you are not moved by this scene nothing will move you. Remember too that the beautiful sailor Frankie as played by Alan Scott died this year in February. Time passes, but as long as we live memory can recall its illusions and its delights. Film too recaptures time and Anouk Aimee will always be ' Lola ' back in that fairy tale time of 1961 when this film branded itself on so many lives, and sadly so many gone. I will see this film again many times, and once seen it has to be seen, many, many times.

Jacques Demy film debut from 1961 starring Anouk Aimee. In France in the city of Nantes, a group of characters connect or encircle each other in the game of love. Aimee plays Lola, a nightclub dancer, raising a small boy who's husband left some time before. American sailors are on leave in town & one in particular visits Lola & professes his love for her which she turns down rationalizing her husband was the only love in her life. Meanwhile an old friend of hers from the neighborhood has lost his job (he's in the process of finding himself) runs into her (he has befriended a woman & her daughter at a book store & has made inroads into a relationship w/them over the promise of a dictionary) putting him in the mind of a love long lost now found. Lola's prodigal husband also features into the mix (fleetingly!) as he pops up from time to time driving around town in an American convertible. Things come to a head when Lola's friend gets a shifty job transporting some diamonds, the daughter he met goes missing & Lola's ex appears to be one step behind her. Described by Demy as a musical w/o musical numbers (there is one though which Aimee delivers w/sensuality to spare) this film feels like the equivalent of a well digested meal. Interesting note in the restoration credits we learn this Lola is the same character Aimee would play 8 years later in Model Shop.

I have recently watched trois couleurs:Rouge and realized that what they're trying to do is similar to Lola. both the movies have reaccuring circumstances such as in trois couleurs, there is an old judge and he talks of his heartbreak. then simultaneously there is a young judge and we get to see his girlfriend cheating on him. In Lola, we see young Cecile and older Cecile, Michel and Franky. maybe they're trying to say life repeats itself? I enjoyed it thoroughly. She is very charming. here are my favorite quotes:

"we're alone and we stay alone but what counts is to want something no matter what the cost is."

"bit of happiness in simply in wanitng to be happy."

This movie is dedicated to Max Ophüls but the actual movie itself feels more like a Fellini. It's kind of like a random slice of life and the style of film-making is focused toward its storytelling, rather than its technical aspects.

The movie its look actually feels kind of guerrilla-style like, as if some sequences simply got shot on the spot, without a setup. No, I don't say this as a negative aspect but it just makes this movie look less slick than usual these type of genre movies tend to do. This has probably got to do with the movie it's low budget. It after all was only Jacques Demy's first full length movie. It at the same time makes "Lola" unique in its sort and it works out refreshing. But having said that; the movie still does feature some beautifully set up sequences, that are great to look at.

But above all things, the movie thrives on its story. Not that is has some terribly complex writing in it but it has the sort of writing that is being more humble and close to life. It's about real people, in real situations, who are all in one way or another involved with the good old subject of love. It's a boy(s) meet girl(s) sort of story, as simple as that, that yet is being complicated by its clever writing style. The movie features different story lines, following different characters but yet somehow the movie manages to feel like one big whole. The stories aren't really necessarily connected (they could had easily sticked to 2 main characters and 1 main plot line) but yet they are, through its themes and settings. It's some great storytelling, that lets things all come together and keeps the movie great and interesting to watch throughout.

It's simplistic movie-making at its best. The story and characters are all humble ones, which does not only give the movie a realistic feel to it but also a real warm one, especially if you're in a romantic kind of mood.

A more than successful and great debut from Jacques Demy.

8/10

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