Jacques Demy’s “Lola” is one of the most romantic of all the French New Wave films: a celebration of love and sensuality, both joyous and bittersweet, that takes place in a world deliciously artificial and hauntingly real. Demy released the movie in 1961, with a great young cinematographer, Raoul Coutard; a great young composer, Michel Legrand — and a star who was then one of the most beautiful film actresses in the world, Anouk Aimee, fresh from Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita.”
All these people would become legendary figures in French film; Aimee, in a way, already was one. But “Lola” catches them at their youthful peak. It’s a film of careless buoyancy and boundless, reckless charm, and in this new black-and-white restoration from a recently reconstructed negative, that charm and sensuality are rendered fully for the first time since the French negative was destroyed in a laboratory fire. Now, as supervised by Demy’s widow, Agnes Varda, Coutard’s blacks and whites are as lustrous as Lola herself.
Lola is played by Aimee, with her regal profile, mischievous eyes and half-smile, and lithe dancer’s body. A cafe dancer and small-time hooker, she’s a figure modeled on Marlene Dietrich’s femme fatale Lola Lola in Josef von Sternberg’s “The Blue Angel” and on Martine Carol’s title character, the real life dancer-courtesan, in Max Ophuls’ “Lola Montes.”
“Lola” is set in Demy’s home seaport city of Nantes, and he makes the city as lovely as Cherbourg in “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” or Rochefort in “The Young Girls of Rochefort.” The camera glides around the city and catches Lola as she moons over her long-lost love Michel (Jacques Harden) and spins around her moody old schoolmate Roland (Marc Michel) and a tough American sailor Frankie (Alan Scott) as they moon over her.
And a young schoolgirl, Cecile, is somehow experiencing Lola’s old loves all over again, falling for Frankie as Lola fell for Michel. (Three of the film’s characters–Cecile, her mother and Roland–turn up again in Demy and Legrand’s classic 1964 musical, “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg,” and Lola later traveled to Los Angeles in Demy’s 1969 “Model Shop.”)
Everything is finally resolved as neatly and improbably as in a musical: something “Lola” almost was. Demy had wanted color cinematography and more songs but had to sacrifice both — though Legrand’s score gives everything a lyrical underpinning.
It’s a movie about wasting days and falling in love. Like Godard’s “Breathless,” Truffaut’s “Shoot the Piano Player,” and Varda’s “Cleo From 5 to 7,” it’s an eternally youthful film, sly and loving and melancholy.
`Lola’
(star)(star)(star)(star)
Directed and written by Jacques Demy; photographed by Raoul Coutard; edited by Anne-Marie Cotret; production designed by Berhard Evein; music by Michel Legrand; produced by Carlo Ponti, Georges de Beauregard. A Winstar Cinema release; opens Friday at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave.; 773-871-6604. English and French; subtitled. Running time: 1:30. No MPAA rating (adult: sensuality, language).
Lola …………….. Anouk Aimee
Roland …………… Marc Michel
Mrs. Desnoyers ……. Elina Labourdette
Frankie ………….. Alan Scott
Cecile …………… Annie Duperoux
Michel …………… Jacques Harden
