A new copy in bracing black & white of Jacques Demy’s first full-length feature film. Lola is programmed as an homage to the deceased master of the sung feature film, in connection with Jacquot de Nantes by Agnès Varda. In Lola coincidences recur systematically while the characters form a chain of coincidental encounters of which the ends eventually meet. The man in white meets the American sailor, who comes across Lola, who in turn meets Roland, who meets Cécile, who meets the American sailor who again bumps into the man in white who in the end meets Lola. This produces a cheerful maze with clashing atoms in which no one loses their way.Jacques Demy dedicated Lola to Max Ophüls’ Lola Montès and also mentioned Prévert and Queneau as his sources of inspiration. The film would appear to deny time and place. Past and present exist in the present without the use of flash-backs. Protagonist Lola (played by Anouk Aimée), singer and dancer in a cabaret show, is portrayed by people around her at different phases in her life.In fact this first film by Demy includes all the elements present in later films from his oeuvre: music, romance, happiness, timeless rural locations, the combination of comedy and tragedy and the denial of realism. On the subject of Lola’s location, Demy told Le Monde: ‘C’est à Nantes que j’ai tourné, parce que j’y suis né et que je connais bien cette ville folle et très belle.’
