France, Italy, 1961
Directed by Jacques Demy
With Anouk Aimée (Lola), Marc Michel (Roland Cassard), Alan Scott (Frankie), Jacques Harden (Michel), Elina Labourdette (Madame Desnoyers), Annie Duperoux (Cécile Desnoyers), Margo Lion (Jeanne)
She gives her name to the debut feature by Jacques Demy but she does not show up right away, quite the contrary. In fact the story of Lola starts with the wanderings of the three men loving her, three quite different fellows whose comings and goings across the native town of the director, Nantes, and interactions, or lack of, with the titular beauty are the main thrust of the loose narrative spanning just three days, a very short time but proving to be decisive for all those people – and others, too, as the film includes another plot about sentiments and sorrow that gets developed on the side.
There is this mysterious man driving a sleek white convertible car, wearing a smart suit and a Stetson which are as glaringly white, dashing through highways and streets, bringing to mind the stereotypical images of wealth and style made in America, as conveyed by Hollywood, from melodramas to noirs, a fellow whom the rumor views as a child of the town who vanished long ago and who would stare at the posters on the facade of a cabaret featuring the big star of the venue, Lola, a dancer and singer who attracts men.
Among them there is a real American, Frankie, a sailor of the United States Navy whose ship has been visiting France but is to sail back to the US – the other sorry fact saddening the sailor in addition to Lola’s refusal to love him as keenly as he loves her, unwilling to keep their affair alive any longer and wishing to stay alone with the son she tries to raise on her own and she had with another man who walked out on her.
And then comes into her life the young man who is actually the first character to be fully developed, the star of the first sequences. Roland Cassard, who lives in a hotel, has been fired from his job, because he is too often late. He does not care a lot about it and is more concerned with what he truly yearns for, what he reckons he can do, what life could bring. His thinking is confused, his body restless, his soul despondent. He is naturally a dreamer and a drifter, more interested in books than in money. He stumbles upon Lola by chance, and it is a huge surprise: she turns out to be an old schoolmate he liked a lot but failed to keep in touch with. Neither thought they could meet again after some fifteen years of separation, but here is the miracle.
And they rush to meet again and again, but it gets awkward and complicated as Roland Cassard realizes he is truly in love with her, but still wishes to sail away (he has even accepted to take part in a shady business enabling him to travel to Amsterdam and Johannesburg designed by unpalatable folks). And what is Lola going to feel about him? And what about Frankie and his reluctance to let Lola go? And what about that man in white lurking around – even if the other characters do not notice him, the camera cleverly points to his presence and the way he crosses the path of the others – yes, what is going to happen to him?
This is a musical film – and not just because there is a number featuring the skills of actress Anouk Aimée, with a song written by Michel Legrand. As they enter the cabaret’s main room, where clients are seated and girls entertain them, the US sailors start dancing: they get in the mood, and the mood is festive as befits a show business venue. But once the story has been told and all the main characters have moved away, the camera comes back to the same spot, tracking another group of sailors, seemingly from the French Navy, entering the room the same way, getting in the same mood: nice repetition emphasizing that the show must go on and that frolicking and flirting are a pattern ever to be repeated, part of the stream of life.
And this is what the other plot of the film was about: the chance encounter of Roland Cassard and a rather snobbish and affected lady, Madame Desnoyers, and her teenage daughter, Cécile Desnoyers, in a book shop. Both women, in their own ways, get besotted with the nice young man who is upset to find that the girl has the same first name as the old schoolmate he liked, the detail triggering his sudden yearning for this ghost of his past Lola proves to be. To follow the Desnoyers seems at first a sideshow poking fun at the mother and her bourgeois, prim principles, and to watch a rather sassy and whimsical teenager.
It turns out as Cécile meets Frankie and dates him, going to a fair with him to celebrate her fourteenth birthday, and then as she runs away from her home, eager to have a life of her own away from the boring mother and the dull town, shocking Madame Desnoyers who is prompted to tell many embarrassing details about his past to Roland Cassard, that this subplot somehow echoes the feelings and circumstances that shaped the life of Lola and are tormenting Roland Cassard and Frankie. This is a subtle variation on the wider theme of a romance that could change everything, widening a life so far limited to a dream and a place. It is about the precious experience of loving someone and enjoying life, taking chance with the unknown – lover, country, job, whatever – even if what happens the day after is far grimmer, even if there is actually no tomorrow.
And music has highlighted the narrative motif: the images of Cécile having fun with Frankie at the fair are edited on the delicate piano composition of the first book of the first prelude of the Well-Tempered Clavier by Ludwig von Beethoven – and it is the allegretto movement of the 7th Symphony of this same composer, that is the same Romantic music, that is used as a leitmotif pointing to the great change the fate of Lola is going to undergo, the reunion with the father of her child, the only, genuine love affair of her life. To her, the film grants a real, moving happy ending, while the others are still on their way to happiness. Music has powerfully expressed feelings, actually, it has introduced them into the film’s tender, splendid shots.
It is also a film about light: Nantes is not at all a dreary place up in the Atlantic Coast of France and not just a casually sunny spot on the ocean. The quality of the lighting as Lola comes and go in her apartment or a public space, like a restaurant, is quite astonishing, a kind of soft key light, as if she was, and the people around her, wrapped in light, highlighting her gestures and her mien. There is more broadly a romantic aura running through the film, as the skillful cinematography of Raoul Coutard creates a consistently wonderfully atmosphere that is as cheerful as it is indeed charming (that makes, along with the elaborate stories of love entanglement, quite natural and understandable that the film is dedicated to Max Ophüls, though the very job and femme fatale power of Lola is also a conspicuous, and playful, nod to the famous 1930 feature of Joseph von Sternberg, “Der blaue Engel – The Blue Angel”).
Telling the hotel owner how little he is tied to ordinary life, Roland Cassard sullenly explains he has nobody to connect to, even the best friend he had got killed, a fellow named Poiccard. The moviegoer would start: it is of course the family name of the lead character of the seminal feature of Jean-Luc Godard released a year earlier, “A bout de souffle – Breathless”. The names of Legrand and Coutard just underline how deeply anchored the film is in the Nouvelle Vague then upsetting the French way of making films. “Lola” is as free and dynamic a narrative as the others milestones of the movement, and bold too: after all, it is centered on an unmarried woman who is bringing up alone a kid, with no relatives or old friends to help her, roaming from town to town to get a contract in the least glamorous and rewarding part of the show business.
Lola still believes in a romance that sounds dead and still enjoys flirting with men, since bodies yearn for desire; but she knows what she wants to feel – this is the big hurdle raised on the amorous ambitions of Roland Cassard and Frankie. She may be a bit confused and sound a bit futile but she remains spirited and forward-looking. She is the very kind of independent, lively, unusual character the young French filmmakers liked (just after “Lola”, Godard would make “Vivre sa vie” starring a prostitute, while Agnès Varda would make “Cléo de 5 à 7”, other great films about women, and the fact they were released after “Lola” points to how pioneering and inspiring Demy was). And she is played movingly and magically by a talented, feisty actress – another reason to watch the film again and again.