Lola (1962)

Too much of everything

the audience applauded

Really Surprised!

Load of rubbish!!

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.

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.8/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

Having heard and read little but lavish praise for this early Jacques Demy entry it was perhaps inevitable that, seeing it for the first time some 43 years after its initial release I would be disappointed. By pure coincidence I had seen exactly one week earlier the now 72 year old Anouk Aimee playing Yvan Attal's mother in a current crowd-pleaser in Paris and it maybe this first-hand and arguably cruel knowledge of how Time deals with the most beautiful of actresses coloured my impressions. There is little radically wrong in this story of missed opportunities and ships-that-pass-in-the-night encounters augmented by a romantic score by Michel Legrand in which he auditions one of the main themes of Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (in the English translation the theme became 'Watch What Happens') which lay some three years in the future. All hands turn in decent enough performances from Anouk (as she was known in her early British films like 'The Golden Salamander') herself through Marc Michel's Roland Cassard, Alan Scott's Frankie and especially Elina Labourdette's Madame Desnoyers. Demy has opted for a sort of uncompleted La Ronde style (the cinematic equivalent of theatre-in-the-half-round) in which characters meet or else just MISS meeting, separate and meet someone else who will, sooner or later, explore the six degrees of separation theory. It's more than possible that had I seen this on its release I would be taking at least one turn around the block on the Hosanna bandwagon but as it stands I rate it a respectable 7/10

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.