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Just perfect...

hyped garbage

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The opening credits to Jacques Demy's 'Lola' establishes that the said film is dedicated to the great German director Max Ophüls. Now the influence of Ophüls can be seen in Demy's fluid camera movement, the meticulous panning shots, the tracking shots and other elements of the camera work. But apart from the cinematography, I also found another thematic link between 'Lola' and one particular Ophüls film, namely 'La Ronde'.Demy does in 'Lola' exactly what Ophüls did in 'La Ronde' which is constantly and intentionally remind the viewer of the lack of realism in the film by imparting a quasi fairy tale-esque tone to it. Any viewer looking for a story grounded in realism will feel frustrated by the numerous coincidences that he/she will be bombarded with. This is a film where the director is consciously manipulating situations through conveniences and coincidences (just like Ophüls in 'La Ronde') to find similarities in various characters and also to explore the cyclical nature of life and its despairs. The result is charming and also emotionally moving.As I mentioned before, Demy is playing around to find similarities in the relationships between various characters as well as the basic connections between the characters. For example - Madame Desnoyers is supposed to be an older version of Lola while her teenage daughter is supposed to represent Lola in her younger days, similarly Lola's son has a connection with Roland since both of them were conceived as a result of an accidental pregnancy, and there is also a clear connection between Michel and Frankie. Although 'Lola' is for the most part light-hearted in tone, it is to be noted that the film has a melancholic core and the melancholy rises to the surface by way of Demy's exploration of human separation, first loves, cyclical creation of similar relationships from one generation to the next, and failed romances. We hear about separations that took place in the past due to wartime compulsions and also characters contemplating departure and hence separation/break-ups in the present times due to sheer disenchantment. Although this concept of separation gets reversed at the climax, the ending to 'Lola' when viewed from multiple perspectives can be best described as bittersweet.Demy had described 'Lola' as a 'musical without too much music' and the performances from the actors including Anouk Aimée are accordingly theatrical instead of naturalistic. My one gripe with the film is that the character of Roland at times felt a little too bland.'Lola' doesn't quite reach the charming heights of Max Ophüls' 'La Ronde' which is clearly a huge influence on this film, however it is still a brilliant piece of work that expertly strikes a balance between playful charm and genuine human emotions. Highly Recommended.P.S. - By the way, this might be a bit inappropriate, but Anouk Aimée in 'Lola' is the perfect representation of the phrase 'Hubba- Hubba'. God was she sexy.

If Jacques Demy is famous for anything - and by anything I mean The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg and The Young Girls Of Rochefort - it's the ability to magic fairytale and fun out of the grey-grind of parochial French life. Admittedly he achieves this in the first place by simply splashing colour over everything. But in this black and white film of 1961, that particular synaesthetic channel isn't open.Instead we get an energetic tale of loves lost and found, missing one another - and, with great care and nuance, reflecting one another. Lola is like Robert Altman or even PT Anderson but before their kookiness or romanticism ironed it out a little.The performances are all strong - even Alan Scott's Frankie; I spent the first half of the film trying to work out whether he's a French playing an American with a bad accent or just an American... The stratified, wistful non-conclusion to the film is a payoff worth pursuing, though the rest of the film is fine. 7/10

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...

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.