Holy Lola (2004)

Holy Lola is a French film comedy-drama first released in 2004, directed by Bertrand Tavernier.  The film stars Jacques Gamblin, Isabelle Carré, Bruno Putzulu, Lara Guirao and Frédéric Pierrot.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


Pierre and Géraldine Ceyssac are a French couple who, unable to have children of their own, head off to Cambodia in the hope of adopting an orphan.  What seemed like a good idea at the time soon develops into a nightmare and they meet several other couples who are in the same predicament.  At every orphanage they visit, it is the same story: all of the orphans have already been ear-marked for wealthy Americans.  Then they have a run-in with some unscrupulous traffickers, whose interests are not in finding suitable homes for parentless children but in extorting as much money as possible from gullible foreigners.   After weeks of futile searching and dashed hopes, Pierre and Géraldine finally strike it lucky.  They can hardly believe their good fortune when they are offered an adorable baby girl, Holy Lola.  But the adventure is far from over.  Now they must confront the mountain of red tape that will allow them to take Lola back home with them to France.  With time fast running out, the couple’s resources are about to be tested to the limit, and a happy outcome is far from certain...

Bertrand Tavernier followed his epic wartime drama Laissez-passer (2002) with a film that could hardly be more different, in both its subject and its style.  Holy Lola depicts the travails of a childless French couple who desperately scour Cambodia for a child they can adopt.  Tavernier’s trademark use of the handheld camera and some brutally naturalistic performances give the film the realism and intimacy of a fly-on-the-wall documentary.  Indeed, there are times when it hardly feels like a drama at all, such is the intensity and visceral emotional force that the leads Jacques Gamblin and Isabelle Carré bring to their performances.  Holy Lola is not only a compelling piece of drama, it is also a shocking exposé of the child adoption practices that go on in the Third World countries, and it raises some timely questions about the morality of what appears to be the most dubious of trades.

Whilst many of Tavernier’s films are impregnated with a social conscience, Holy Lola is the one in which the director appears to be most thoroughly engaged with the social issues it explores.  Tavernier avoids finger-pointing didacticism and merely presents the situation as he finds it, like a seasoned documentary filmmaker.  The question that naturally arises is why Tavernier did not go the extra mile and make this a documentary instead of a drama.  One suspects the reason was more commercial than artistic - as a documentary, the film would certainly have had more bite to it, but it would probably not have reached as large an audience.  It is a testament to the skill of Tavernier’s cast and production team (in particular his camera operator Alain Choquart) that the film feels as true to life as it does.

Holy Lola derives most of its emotional power from the exceptional contributions of its leads Jacques Gamblin and Isabelle Carré.  Both actors play their parts so convincingly that it is almost too painful to watch as their characters are put through the most harrowing of physical and emotional ordeals.  As Carré is visibly ripped apart by her emotions, Gamblin performs yet another of his everyman to superhero transformations, stoically battling against corruption, false hopes and bureaucratic nonsense to fulfil his dream.  All this takes place against the backdrop of a country that is still scarred by the traumas of the past - the spectre of Khymer Rouge can still be felt, landmines are still being cleared (too late for the many unfortunates who have lost their legs), and the criminally minded profit from the country’s underdeveloped system of administration and policing.  The true face of Cambodia is more vividly evoked in a series of films made by the great Cambodian film director Rithy Panh - films such as Rice People (1993) and S21: The Khmer Rouge Death Machine (2003).  As it happens, Panh makes a cameo appearance in Tavernier’s film, which should perhaps be read as a stamp of approval.

Holy Lola is by no mean Bertrand Tavernier’s most perfect film, but it is easily one of his most worthy and humane works. The grimness of its subject matter is slyly counterpointed by some cruel excursions into black comedy - reminiscent of the dark asides in Coup de torchon (1981) - and towards the end, as the Ceyssac couple look as though they are never going to extricate themselves from the web of red tape in which they become enmeshed, it teeters manically between Greek tragedy and Feydeau farce.  Will Pierre and Géraldine triumph and win their passport to happiness, or will their mountain of hopes come crashing down like the flimsy house of cards it so obviously resembles?  Tavernier keeps us in suspense right to the nail-biting end and leaves us pondering a more profound question: just what is so wrong with the child adoption system in the West that infertile couples are driven to trawl orphanages in Third World countries?  Holy Lola is a magnificent conscience-stirrer, as shocking as it is heart-wrenching, as moving as it is darkly ironic - unquestionably one of Tavernier’s most inspired and authentic films to date.

© James Travers 2011

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