‘Lola’: Jacques Demy’s underrated masterpiece
At the beginning of Jacques Demy’s debut feature, Lola, a man pulls up in a gorgeous Cadillac and takes a moment to look out over the sea. Dressed in shades and a cowboy hat, it’s clear that this man has taken inspiration from movies made across the pond. European cinema was borrowing from Hollywood, and Hollywood was subsequently borrowing from Europe. Lola feels like a blend of European and Hollywood cinema, sitting somewhere in the middle of nihilism and joyousness, edging much closer towards the latter.
After Lola, Demy became better known for his candy-coloured musicals, such as The Young Girls of Rochefort, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and Donkey Skin, all of which star French icon Catherine Deneuve. These movies are all slightly ridiculous, as musicals have to be at their core, with characters melodramatically singing their way through life as they face romantic and familial issues. Lola isn’t a musical, although performance is still a central theme, with Lola going by a new identity while dancing and singing as a profession.
It also looks rather different from these other films – the bright hues of his best-known works swapped out for glamorous black-and-white. Yet, it is arguable that Demy couldn’t have made his later works without Lola, a tender tale of coincidences, a quest for fulfilment, and subtle acts of magic.
These optimistic themes are anchored down by a small serving of sadness and realism, with Demy ensuring that our vision isn’t entirely clouded by romanticism. Still, the film seems to suggest that it is OK to temporarily lose sight of life’s bleaker moments – as long as we don’t forget altogether.
We meet several characters during the film whose storylines weave in and out of each other. Roland is a drifter, and when he reconnects with Lola, an old friend, his feelings for her come flooding back. Yet, Lola, a cabaret dancer who manages to be equally playful and seductive, is still in love with Michel, the father of her child, who ran off years prior. Then there’s a sailor named Frankie and a 14-year-old girl called Cecile, who prove to be vital to Demy’s narrative, too.
Each character has its own function, such as echoing another character, as is the case with Cecile, who reflects a younger version of Lola. The sailor contains traces of Michel, and Roland acts as a reminder of lost love for Lola, who cannot accept his advances when Michel is still on her mind. These obvious allusions to characters through others and unsubtle coincidences work perfectly within Demy’s dreamy cinematic world.
It gives Lola a sense of whimsy and romanticism that mirrors the overarching sentiment of the film – that life and relationships can be complicated, but there’s a real beauty in connection. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, things can feel as though they’ve been cosmically aligned.
Still, Demy knows that things aren’t always going to work out, and many of the characters fail to achieve what it is they set out to get. Lola picks Michel over Roland despite the fact that he abandoned her. Demy demonstrates the ways that different people approach romance and that happiness comes in varying forms through Lola. Characters come and go, and so do relationships and chances for connection; the least we can do is have the courage to try, the courage to throw ourselves into life – to hopefully find happiness.
