Product Details

• Actors: Anouk Aimée, Marc Michel, Jacques Harden, Alan Scott, Elina Labourdette
• Directors: Jacques Demy
• Format: Black & White, Subtitled, NTSC
• Language: English, French
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Fox Lorber
• VHS Release Date: December 9, 2003
• Run Time: 100 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B0000CDL9D
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #68,471 in Video (See Bestsellers in Video)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #95 in

  Video > Art House & International > European Cinema > France > French New Wave

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 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars If you love "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg", ..., December 28, 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).

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Predecessor to "Umbrellas of Cherbourg", December 14, 2001

By	L. Blatt (Maplewood, NJ United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Lola [VHS] (VHS Tape)

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.

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

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.