Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #73225 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-12-09
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Black & White, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 90 minutes

Amazon.com
The innovations of the French New Wave were many, but one was the uncorking of sheer joy: joy in youth, joy in rule-breaking, joy in cinema. No film of the era is more blissful than Jacques Demy's Lola, a bittersweet ode to first loves and missed opportunities. Gorgeously photographed by Raoul Coutard (shortly after his groundbreaking work on Breathless), it's set in the atmospheric seaside town of Nantes. At the center of the interlocking storylines is a dancer (the stunning Anouk Aimée), who reunites with an ennui-burdened childhood friend (Marc Michel) but pines for the memory of a long-lost sailor. Lola points toward Demy's subsequent musical treasures, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort, which together form one of the great happy visions in all of movies: a niche between workaday reality and a fairy-tale world in which everything works out exactly as it should. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

If you love "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg", ...
If you love "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg", then you must get "Lola". "Lola" is a good film on its own. However, seeing Lola will enrich your love of "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg". That's because you would better understand Roland Cassard (played by Marc Michel), the rich man who married the girl played by Catherine Deneuve in "The Umbrellas".

(See also the first review posted here by a viewer from NJ which is very informative).

The Predecessor to "Umbrellas of Cherbourg"
Ever see Jacques Demy's lovely "Umbrellas of Cherbourg"? This is the film he made BEFORE Umbrellas - and the central character is Roland Cassard, the second man in Umbrellas. "Lola" stands by itself as a lovely introduction to Demy's world - boy meets girl, boy loses girl to her first love, boy goes off to smuggle diamonds (and reappears in Umbrellas as a diamond merchant). Very much worth seeing if you enjoy Umbrellas, and it could give you a new perspective on that excellent movie.

Wonderfully Romantic, Beautiful Anouk Aimee
Jacques Demy had a special way of viewing the world. He loved women and he was an incurable romantic. This delicate movie about a melancholy, gorgeoous woman in Nantes, France, who "dances" with sailors to earn a living while pining after her true love is a bittersweet poetic ode to the romantic in all of us. Anouk Aimee who was stunning years later in A Man and a Woman gave one of her best performances in this film, with a charming music score by Michel Legrand (and themes that would reappear in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg). Lola was recently restored so it looks very good on this DVD but I wish they hadn't used yellow subtitles--very distracting--which is why I didn't give the film five stars.