Product Details

• Actors: Anouk Aimée, Marc Michel, Jacques Harden, Alan Scott, Elina Labourdette
• Directors: Jacques Demy
• Writers: Jacques Demy
• Producers: Carlo Ponti, Georges de Beauregard
• Format: Black & White, Subtitled, NTSC
• Language: English, French
• Subtitles: English
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Fox Lorber
• VHS Release Date: December 9, 2003
• Run Time: 90 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0000CDL9D
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #480,104 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

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

Product Description

Anouk Aimée (A Man and a Woman) delivers a groundbreaking performance in the title role of Lola. Left by her sailor lover Michel (Jacques Harden), on the eve of her pregnancy seven years ago, Lola brings up their son while working as a dancer in a sailor

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If you love "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg", ..., December 27, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Jacques Demy's Lola (DVD)

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).

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not a masterpiece but very likeable, May 19, 2007

By 

Trevor Willsmer (London, England) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Jacques Demy's Lola (DVD)

Originally conceived as a Technicolor musical but shot on the cheap (so cheap they couldn't even afford a sound crew), Jacques Demy's Lola isn't exactly the masterpiece critics claimed back in 1960, but it is one of the more likable films of the French New Wave, largely because it's less concerned with scoring stylistic points and more interested in people. What's particularly refreshing is that Demy likes these people - all of them, without exception - and never judges them, and that generosity of spirit carries it a long way. Following the role coincidence plays in our lives through its characters whose paths and hearts cross, it staves off complete schmaltz with an awareness that one person's happy ending is often another's missed possibility of happiness: Demy may not be able to resist giving one character a Hollywood Happy Ending, but it does come at a price to another, while other characters lives are left unresolved. There are a few moments where Anouk Aimee's tart with a heart overdoes the Marilyn impersonations (an affectation of the character rather than the actress) and Allan Scott's English dialogue sounds like it's been dubbed by a German reading phonetically, but they're fairly fleeting irritants and there's more than enough elsewhere to make up for it, not least Raoul Coutard's lovingly shot black and white Scope photography of Nantes.

The 2.35:1 widescreen transfer transfer, taken from a restored version, is good but not outstanding (though with the budgetary limitation the filmmakers had in 1960, it's doubtful it could look much better). Aside from the original theatrical trailer it also includes an extract from the documentary The World of Jacques Demy about the making of the film, though for the section dealing with the forgotten US sequel, Model Shop, you'll have to buy the documentary (available separately) itself.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderfully Romantic, Beautiful Anouk Aimee, March 20, 2004

By 

Gabriel Oak (Middletown, CT USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Jacques Demy's Lola (DVD)

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.