Very Cool!!!

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Whether or not you enjoy "Lola", the disc from Criterion includes a surprisingly large number of extras--including several of Demy's early short films.The story is named for the main character, Lola (Anouk Aimée) who is a cabaret dancer who is either very promiscuous or a prostitute--you really don't know whether or not she charges for her services or is just incredibly friendly! She is, at the same time, hoping a lover from seven years ago returns to claim her and her child fathered by him. At the same time, several others in the film are also looking for love...such as an old friend of Lola's who is infatuated with her, an older lady who wants to capture this man for herself and her very, very stupid daughter who just turned 14 and is looking for love in all the wrong places.The film is technically well made but is very little like his later masterpiece, "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg". It's competently made and mildly interesting but for me that was really all there was to it.

Truly this is one of the Nouvelle Vague debuts to be cherished, not so much for new ground it breaks because the way had been paved for adventurous makers who wanted out from the constraints of stage a few years prior, but because it paces freely and briskly.How to shape the comingling of life that plays a cosmic joke on us and our effort to pursue meaning must have been the question in Demy's mind, with whom I'm happy to be acquainted here for the first time, the door to his home opened by my recent discovery of his wife, Varda. Different characters stroll around Nantes in search of lost time and love that can be new again. The man chances to meet one day in the street a flame of his childhood, the girl Lola in turn has taken in her bed an American sailor that reminds her of hers. This is memory, consciousness that looks back on itself and forward to itself (it's the same facet of ourselves that creates memory and anticipation). Demy creates it so that he can wonder about the possibility of an anchor, happiness, in a life that heaves this way and that with turbulent streams of consciousness that carry the past and flow out to future sea. The man is free from constraints as the film begins, hopping around town, but the freedom only makes him languish. We need life that points to something outside of us yet the joke played on us by life is that we keep encountering ourselves ahead of ourselves, the life we've set in motion.True to the returning nature of consciousness, characters relive feelings of old and contemplate love that can sustain a future life while the present is pulling them away in other directions, a smuggling trip to South Africa, a return voyage to America, a girl absconding to Cherbourg in search of life. In a masterful stroke we relive Lola's first love through a surrogate infatuated girl who walks around a funpark with the sailor lookalike, a scene that recalls the sage Epstein. This is the lushest of different strolls and it is only the lack of poetics of transcendence that I miss here, Demy being content with transparent observation and dialogue. Resnais had triumphed in this two years prior in Hiroshima mon amour and through the years we arrive at the wholly fluid unmooring of space in Malick which harks all the way back to Epstein.Demy made a second film that I've already set my eyes on, that picks up in Cherbourg after events of this continuing the return, the protagonist here returns as a character there, there's a flashback and a dinner scene that repeats. I pick up the thread there.Here, none of it truly materializes love except perhaps the dreamlike return of the son in his rich convertible who drives around town for the duration, reluctant to return. But we have past and future materializing together in the walk that gives a clear-eyed perception of ourselves at the crossroads.

The work of Jacques Demy (1931-90) has been called more approachable than that of many other French New Wave directors. His most famous and beloved film is most likely the 1964 musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg which is the second film in Demy's informal "romantic trilogy" that was started in 1961 with his feature debut Lola and finished in 1967 with The Young Girls of Rochefort. While Lola is less melodramatic than Umbrellas, it is an interesting portrayal of complexities of romantic love in its own right.The story is set in Demy's hometown of Nantes near the Atlantic coast. A daydreaming young man Roland Cassard (Marc Michel) drifts from job to job until suddenly stumbling upon a cabaret dancer called Lola (Anouk Aimée), a childhood friend of his. Lola has a young son and gets a lot of attention from men, including an American Navy sailor named Frankie (Alan Scott), but only longs for her first true love Michel who left the town when she was pregnant and hasn't shown up since. Besides his newfound infatuation with Lola, Cassard also becomes acquainted with a single mother Mrs. Desnoyers (Elina Labourdette) and her teenage daughter Cécile (Annie Duperoux) who strongly resembles a younger Lola.While watching the film, it soon becomes evident Demy is more interested in atmosphere than a strictly defined plot. The streets and locations of the coastal city of Nantes make a very pleasant-looking environment for the romantic feelings that are thrown around, sometimes requited, sometimes not. The effect of the not very distant World War 2 is still evident in the city: American soldiers frequent cabaret bars, people have their missing loved ones in fresh memory and many have had their lives changed significantly. Times can be tough for a dreamer like Cassard who appears to get involved in a shady smuggling operation, thus starting a crime subplot in the movie, but again, only feelings are what really matter in the world of Lola.I liked especially the black and white photography of the street views as well as the cheery songs at Lola's cabaret bar. The use of music in general is pretty varied in the movie: a recurring piece is the beautiful Allegretto part from Beethoven's 7th Symphony, but the hectic jazz tunes never feel out of place either. With regard to the acting, the heart and soul of the movie is of course the eponymous Lola whose lively, emotional and energetic antics are memorably brought to life by Anouk Aimée. The young girl Cécile is also well portrayed by Annie Duperoux in her first (and penultimate) role. The men are hopelessly overshadowed by the women, although certain amount of detachedness suits Michel's character well. Alan Scott's heavily accented French (perhaps phonetically memorized?) doesn't sound very convincing though, considering Frankie's somewhat fluent grasp of grammar and casual conversation.I am sure Lola will feel the most powerful to those who have been in love themselves and know the feeling of first love that is remembered even after many years. Demy's film seems to suggest such a feeling is something that life cyclically repeats for so many people, but to each person it is once new. Well, that is what I got out of it anyway but in any case, I would say Lola is recommended viewing for Nouvelle Vague beginners and anyone who likes The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. There may not be as much singing in Lola (described by Demy as "a musical without music") as in Umbrellas, but the two films have a lot in common, such as the theme of lasting love and the Roland Cassard character. Fans of more atmospheric romance cinema should also give Lola a look.

This director is ROMANTIC! I think he rightly shows the astonishing contrast between love being generated by complete chance and fleeting encounter - with its lasting consequence and possibly enduring devotion. I just loved it. One of the things that is so winning about this movie (also true of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) is how very modest the characters -- and the movie - are. The characters are sincere - if they lie, they apologize later - and unafraid to say when they are greatly moved -- and when they aren't.I think both movies wonderfully portray mother - daughter relationships - and both are quite sympathetic to men as well as women. How often do you see movies that show the truth of men's emotions wracked by romantic feelings (rather than solely lust) - sometimes returned and sometimes not? Very seldom.In some ways, I prefer Lola to Umbrellas because the plot is more ingenious, the vividly drawn characters more numerous - so there is more to engross one. (On the other hand, by concentrating on just the love for one woman, Umbrellas creates an agony in the viewer that is more powerful than any feeling in Lola). Just see it - and you'll see many disparate pieces pull together in a wonderfully satisfying, utterly charming, wonderful romantic tale. Lola and Umbrellas make me anxious to see the Young Girls of Rochefort.