Lola (1961)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Lola (1961) – J. Demy

France at the start of the 1960s, not Paris, but Nantes (to the Southwest).  Is director Jacques Demy part of the New Wave? The film, shot by Godard’s DP Raoul Coutard, does have the look, in glorious widescreen black and white.  But Demy dedicated the film to Max Ophuls, master of the longshot in La Ronde (1950), Madame de (1953), and Lola Montes (1955; from which this film gets its name) – did he represent the “tradition of quality” that the New Wave was rebelling against? He was dead before they began (in 1957).  Demy would soon direct the melancholic but glorious The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), which had the actors sing all of the dialogue to the music of Michel Legrand (who also provides the score here in Demy’s first film).  So, Demy followed his own path (as did his wife, Agnes Varda; Cleo from 5 to 7, 1962) and so does this film.  Although the film is titled for Anouk Aimée’s cabaret dancer (very different from her sour wife in Fellini’s 8 ½, 1963), we seem to spend more time with Marc Michel who plays Roland Cassard, a bored and rather aimless young man who meets former childhood friend Lola by accident on the sidewalk and falls in love with her.  However, Lola, a single mum pining for her boyfriend now gone for 7 years, is not interested in Roland nor anyone who might represent a serious commitment (she has a fling with an American sailor instead).  A side-plot or two introduces characters who bear resemblances to the main duo and link with them (or others in the story), a feature that Demy also apparently included _across_ films where these characters may turn up later.  Perhaps the plot goes nowhere – certainly this is the case for Cassard (but not for Lola herself) – but the idling is enjoyable, with a dance number and a potential crime enlivening things.  Apart from the beautiful opening shot, I didn’t register many Ophuls styled long-shots (they may be there), but the film has an ease and grace that reminds one of the master...and simultaneously, the New Wave.