I'd heard some good things about Jacques Demy's debut effort and I adore his third film, Umbrellas of Cherbourg, so tonight it was time to watch Anouk Aimée strut her stuff as Lola, the cabaret singer.

Historical Background: Jacques Demy was born in 1931 in Pont-Château, France and died in 1990. After studying art in Nantes and film in Paris, he worked in animation, documentaries, and shorts, before directing his debut feature film, Lola, in 1960. Since he dedicated the film to Max Ophüls and received technical assistance from Jean-Luc Godard, Lola immediately placed Demy's name on the ledger of New Wave auteurs. To describe Demy as a sensitive romantic is a bit of an understatement. With Lola, Demy established his penchant for treacly narratives, elegant sets, and thematic exploration love, separation, and coincidence. His third film, Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), was revolutionary in concept and proved to be his masterpiece. Every word of dialog in that film is sung. The Young Girls of Rochefort (See skbreese's Review) was also musical, though more conventionally so. Demy worked in America, later in his career, but had limited success. His 1982 film, A Room in Town, won the Grand Prix du Cinéma. Demy was married to director Agnes Varda (see Cléo from 5 to 7 and Vagabond) and she played a major role in the restoration of Lola.

There are some bizarre connections between Lola and Umbrellas of Cherbourg, despite the change in visual and auditory style. The character Roland Cassard appears in both films and is played each time by Marc Michel. It is clearly intended to be the same person since the Roland in Umbrellas makes reference to his earlier experiences in Nantes, the setting of Lola. In both films, Roland wants to marry a woman who already has a child by another man. Both movies also feature a woman waiting for an absent love and a strong mother-daughter relationship. The name of the film, Lola, was a dual tribute, one nod to the last film of Max Ophüls, Lola Montes (1955), and the other to Marlene Dietrich's character (also a cabaret performer) in The Blue Angel (1930).

The Story: Lola (Anouk Aimée) is surprising guileless for a woman making her living as a cabaret dancer and paid companion for the American sailors on liberty from the ships anchored in the port of Nantes. She is a loving mother to her seven-year-old son, Yvon (Delaroche), who was fathered by Lola's first love, hometown boy Michel (Jacques Harden). Although he ran out on her as soon as he learned she was pregnant, Lola lives in the unshakable hope that he'll return to her, one of these days. Meanwhile, she entertains Frankie (Alan Scott), a good-hearted blond sailor who craves Lola more than she craves him.

There are other story threads developed concurrently. A mystery man is driving about in a fancy while Cadillac convertible and nearly runs down a group of sailors that include Frankie. Elsewhere, the handsome and literate but aimless Roland (Marc Michel) prefers hanging out at the bar owned by Claire (Catherine Lutz) to showing up for work. Michel's mother, Jeanne (Margo Lion), lives upstairs from the bar and hangs out there doing second-rate paintings. Claire tries to look after Roland, nagging him about getting to work, but when he gets fired, she's happy to loan him a few francs.

Roland stops by a bookstore and meets a middle-aged widow, Madame Desnoyers (Elina Labourdette), who's shopping for a French-English dictionary for her daughter Cécile (Annie Duperoux), who's almost fourteen. The bookstore doesn't have what they need but Roland offers them his dictionary, which he no longer needs. It's hard to tell whether it's the mother or the daughter who is more enamored with the handsome Roland, though he's too young for the one and too old for the other. Roland takes a shine to Cécile because she has the same name as his own first girlfriend and a similar look as well.

Back at Claire's bar, Claire and Jeanne inform Roland about a possible job they've heard about. Roland goes to check it out. It turns out to be work as a courier smuggling diamonds out of South Africa. Then, on his way to deliver the dictionary to the Desnoyers residence, Roland runs into Lola, whose real name, it transpires, is Cécile. She's the very one that Roland secretly loved years ago. Lola is only her professional name. They arrange a date for that evening. Lola goes off to work while Roland delivers the dictionary as promised and gets invited to help celebrate little Cécile's fourteen birthday the next evening.

Lola and Roland meet at 8:00 PM as previously arranged and enjoy dinner together. Roland finds himself falling in love with Lola all over again. They part as she goes off to work. Later, after her midnight performance at the cabaret, she allows Frankie to come home with her, because he needs a place to sleep. It's Frankie's last night in town. Roland, who's come looking for Lola, erroneously imagines that Frankie's his competition.

In the morning, Frankie runs into the young Cécile on her fourteenth birthday. She's feeling like a big girl now and he's lonely, so the two head for the carnival and enjoy each other's company. Lucky for her, Frankie's a decent kind of chap. They hold hands a bit and he puts his arm around her shoulder on the roller coaster, but he lets it go at that. Even so, she's heartbroken when he has to rejoin his shipmates. Back home, she deflects her mother's concern about her lateness, until she blurts out that she's spent the afternoon with a sailor. Roland shows up for the dinner engagement, pouting about being rejected by his first love, and Cécile identifies with his pain.

Well, the basic idea here is that everyone knows everyone else, without actually knowing that they're all mutually involved in different combinations and the plot develops through a series of chance encounters together with near misses. Some of the yearnings work themselves out while others are left unfulfilled.

Themes: The twin themes, here, are the same ones that Demy returned to repeatedly: love acts in strange ways and life is full of fortuitous chance events and many other missed opportunities. To some extent, we're all like ships passing in the night, occasionally meeting for a rendezvous but far more often passing each other by, without ever knowing what's happening on-board the other vessel.

Production Values: For the most part, Demy has opted to focus on a bunch of rather ordinary and confused people who wouldn't typically warrant much attention. He takes their mundane lives and throws a spotlight on them, giving them a magnified importance, but treating it all with a sentimental sheen that makes them important for as long as the film happens to last. It's nice to encounter a film that treats men as romantic fools to the same extent as the women. The structure of the film is reminiscent of Ophül's La Ronde, although Lola just doesn't pull it off nearly as successfully. The narrative ends up being little more than silly nonsense, lazily structured and aimless.

On the other hand, viewers couldn't ask for anything more from the cinematography. It is provided by Raoul Coutard, who worked extensively with Godard. Not only is the black-and-white photography gorgeously composed, the camera movements are so utterly fluid and mobile that Lola has sometimes been described as a musical without music.

Michel Legrand, who provided the soundtrack, later won accolades for the marvelous score for Umbrellas of Cherbourg. His music here is interesting and appropriate, but nowhere in the same league as for his later collaborations with Demy for Umbrellas or The Young Girls from Rochefort. The dialog was all post-recorded because Demy's budget was so restrictive that he couldn't afford a sound crew. Unfortunately, it is evident in a lack of range and inflection.

The performances are quite excellent. Anouk Aimée gave a career performance in a role that suited her perfectly. She is otherwise best known for performances in La Dolce Vita (1960) and A Man and a Woman (1966). She is something of a Jacqueline Kennedy look alike, but with a bit of the sex-kitten quality of Marilyn Monroe. Aimée sings a little cabaret number that is almost worth the price of admissions by itself. Elina Labourdette gave a heart-rending portrayal as the lonely widow, Madame Desnoyers. The scene in which Cécile turns fourteen was actually shot on the fourteenth birthday of actress Annie Duperoux.

Bottom-Line: So, script-wise, we've got a lightweight and lazily structured divertissement with some cute reflections on coincidence but no real depth. The story is enhanced, however, by some top-notch cinematography and fine performances, as well as an average score. I'd like to give this film 3.5 stars, but I'm going to average down this time rather than up. Lola is in French with English subtitles and has a running time of 90 minutes.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Good Date Movie
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older