Lola (1961)
Directed by Jacques Demy

Film Review

If there is one unifying theme to the French New Wave, it is a conscious attempt to more accurately portray real life in cinema, to break away from the conventions and lazy clichés that had made films a poor approximation to how most people lived their lives. This striving for authenticity was embraced most vigorously by such filmmakers as Jean-Luc Godard, Jacques Rivette and Francois Truffaut, one-time critics who set out to revolutionise French cinema in the late 1950s, early 1960s, after lambasting it for its tired conformity.   On the face of it, director Jacques Demy appeared to be heading in the opposite direction, shoring up the old archetypes and artificial stylisation of the past to create films that seem to epitomise the naive out-dated romanticism that was anathema to the spirit of the Nouvelle Vague.  Yet Demy's films are as much a part of the French New Wave as Godard's and Truffaut's, and are just as successful in grasping the elusive nettle of authenticity that these directors set so much store by.  Beneath the gaudy surface artifice and head-spinning maze of plot contrivance, Demy's films have depth and sincerity, qualities that make them universally accessible and profoundly moving.  What may look like whimsical fairytales are in fact insightful and deeply compassionate studies in the trauma of human experience.

Jacques Demy's unique vision of cinema is already crystallised in his first full-length film, Lola, which he made after directing a number of documentary shorts.  The two most significant influences on Demy were the spectacular MGM musicals of the 1940s and '50s and the films of the great German cineaste Max Ophüls (to whom Lola is dedicated, named after his last great work Lola Montès).  Lola was originally conceived as a lavish colour musical, but Demy's producer Georges de Beauregard soon put paid to that idea.  The film that Demy ended up making may not have been the overblown extravaganza he had envisaged but it does evoke something of those great Hollywood musicals and was an essential stepping stone to the musicals he would make in the years that followed, notably Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964) and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort (1967).  Nor is music overlooked in Lola - it is in fact an essential element of the film.  The soundtrack includes an original score by Demy's lifelong collaborator Michel Legrand and part of the Second Movement from Beethoven's Seventh Symphony, both of which are supremely effective in helping to tell the story, stressing the emotional highs and lows of the protagonists whilst heightening the lyrical power of what we see on the screen.  There is even a full-blown musical number, Lola's Song, written by Demy's wife Agnès Varda and performed with show-stopping panache by Anouk Aimée.

Of all the films that Jacques Demy made, Lola is the one that is most readily identified with the French New Wave.  Shot entirely on location in black and white without artificial lighting, it has that gritty, unglamorous naturalism that we associate with the early films of the Nouvelle Vague - albeit (unusually) in widescreen format.  The film owes its distinctive look to cinematographer Raoul Coutard, who had recently worked with Jean-Luc Godard on his debut feature À bout de souffle (1960).  Demy and Coutard make an interesting combination, since they appear (at a superficial level) to represent the two extreme poles of film aesthetic, artifice versus realism.  Oddly, it is Coutard's cinematography that contributes most to the film's sense of unreality.  Whereas the diffuse daylight of Paris allowed Coutard to capture a near-documentary realism in his early films for Godard and Truffaut, here the blistering sunlight of Nantes (Demy's home town) almost completely saturates the film, achieving virtually the opposite effect.   In some scenes, the characters are reduced to silhouettes performing like marionettes in front of a blinding white background; in others, the intense light brings an eerie dreamlike quality to what we see.  The effect is quite startling and grants us admission to both the exterior and interior worlds of the protagonists.  We sense the penury of Lola's existence and the ennui that afflicts Roland, but we can also engage with the fluffy hopes and dreams that make their lives bearable.  Demy takes subjectivity to a more extreme level in the sequence in which the young Cécile enjoys a birthday outing with the sailor Frankie, employing the slow-motion device that has since become a stock cliché of the worst kind but which works perfectly here, in the context of a foolish little girl wallowing in her first amorous infatuation.

Taking the lead in one of her most memorable screen roles is Anouk Aimée, who had recently had a major career break through Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) and who would later win international celebrity for her part in Claude Lelouch's Un homme et une femme (1966).  Whilst, on paper, Lola is little more than a walking cliché, a good-natured prostitute pining for her one true love, Aimée brings a heart-wrenching reality to the part - whilst stunningly sensual in her cabaret number, she is subtly moving in those scenes when she reflects on her lost love.  Demy's penchant for casting exceptionally photogenic young actors is apparent in his choice for the three male leads - Marc Michel, Alan Scott and Jacques Harden - although, like Aimée, all manage to make their archetypal characters (the moody drifter, the lovelorn sailor and the returning lover) convincing and sympathetic.  Michel, who had previously featured in Jacques Becker's Le Trou (1960), would reprise his role as the upwardly mobile jewel merchant in Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (1964), whilst Anouk Aimée would also return as Lola, in Demy's darkly reflective Model Shop (1969).  The film's most endearing (and amusing) character is the snobbish man-eater Madame Desnoyers, played with relish by Elina Labourdette, who had previously starred in Robert Bresson's Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945).

There is an austere beauty to Lola that sets it apart from Demy's other work and makes it one of his most exquisitely poignant films.  The characters may be superficial, the plot hopelessly contrived, but none of this matters.  In the bizarre quasi-real fairytale that Demy lures us into, it is not long before we find something we can relate to and take comfort from.  Whilst Demy's subsequent films would become more stylised, more prone to sugary artifice and less like the world we recognise as our own, they would still have an irresistible allure and remain relevant to us. Demy's mesmerisingly beautiful filmscapes suggest the unblemished paradise that we yearn for, but beneath the surface impression we see also the flawed Eden in which we live and which we must content ourselves with.  If authenticity was the goal of the French New Wave, then Jacques Demy surely found it in his films.

Film Synopsis

Lola is a cabaret singer and dancer in the French port of Nantes.  A prostitute, she is popular with the town's sailors, especially an American sailor named Frankie, who is madly in love with her.   Frankie reminds Lola of her first love, Michel, who left her seven years ago to make his fortune in another country, unaware that he had given her a child.  One day, Lola runs into a childhood friend Roland Cassard, a young drifter who is unsure what to do with his life.  Roland soon discovers that he is in love with Lola, but she, still faithful to Michel, is unable to love him in return.  A chance encounter with a girl who resembles Lola when she was a child brings Roland into contact with a former dancer Madame Desnoyers, who lost everything in the war.  Whilst the latter is obviously smitten with Roland, he thinks only of leaving Nantes, perhaps to fulfil a commission as a diamond smuggler.  Just as Lola is about to leave the town for a gig in Marseilles, her former lover Michel returns - but will Fate bring them together or keep them apart forever?