Lola

A French film set in Nantes. Lola dances at a cabaret. She has a son and raises him alone. A man left seven years ago. Michel is the boy's father; he said he was going to make money and never came back. Lola is waiting for him. Roland is in the same city. Out of work, unsettled, and he does not know what to do. Roland and Lola were childhood friends. They meet in the street. He falls in love with her. From there the film runs several lines at once. There is Cécile as well. A girl of fourteen; she lives with her mother. She meets an American sailor. Frankie is on leave and his ship sails soon. Frankie is also someone Lola knows. The narrative sets these three women side by side. Cécile is Lola at fourteen; Cécile's mother could be Lola later on. The same name is inside the narrative too. Cécile's real name is also Lola's real name. What the narrative is interested in is not love but repetition: its idea is that the same story is lived the same way across three generations and that nobody notices. The coincidences never stop. People meet in the same street, the same arcade, the same café. The narrative does not present this as realism. It builds a tale on purpose. At the end a white Cadillac arrives. This is Jacques Demy's first feature. The characters appear in his later films; Roland and Lola cross into other narratives. The images are black and white and widescreen; Raoul Coutard shot it. It was filmed in Nantes, in real locations. Anouk Aimée, Marc Michel, Jacques Harden and Elina Labourdette are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes the French New Wave and light, musically pitched narrative. Who it is not for: anyone looking for realism; the plot rests entirely on coincidence and that is deliberate.