No Kinks music here

Anouk Aimée is another of the people who left us in 2024 and whom TCM included in the late December "parade of the dead" night where they show one movie from each of several people who died in 2024. The movie they showed in her honor was one I have to admit I hadn't heard of before: Lola. But it sounded worth recording, so I did and eventually watched it to do the post on it here.

We don't see Lola for several minutes into the movie. The movie starts with opening credits and a man driving into Nantes, a port city on the Atlantic coast of France, looking like one of those stereotypical Hollywood movie rich guys, with a convertible and a white suit. This is a bit of foreshadowing. Another man, Roland (Marc Michel), is a man who hasn't been able to make much of his life because he's a dreamer. He wakes up late from his lunch break, and when he goes back to work is informed that he's being fired for chronic tardiness.

Meanwhile, there's a US Navy ship docked in Nantes, and the American men on the ship like to go into town to blow off some steam and enjoy themselves. One of the things they do is to go to a bar that looks like it would be a nightclub if only it were nighttime. The sailors dance with the girls working there as if the girls are taxi dancers. One of them is Lola (Anouk Aimée), who is being pursued by Frankie, and American sailor. But we know this isn't going to be a lasting relationship since Frankie's ship is going to be leaving port soon. Besides, we learn that Lola has a young child. It turns out that she was knocked up some years back by Michel, the one true love of her life. But he was too poor to raise a child, so he left town until he could make something of himself, at which point he vowed to come back a rich man.

Roland goes looking for a job and is told there's a hairdresser who has something possibly waiting for an obliging young man. Roland goes, and the manager of the salon tells him something that makes the job offer seem like it's clearly not quite legal. Well much more illegal than that. Roland's job would be to take a boat to Amsterdam, and then go from there to South Africa, where he'll meet somebody in Johannesburg. Roland is being given an attache case which he is expected to give the man in Johannesburg in exchange for another case that's going to look the same and which Roland is to bring back here. Now, it's obvious that Roland is being asked to smuggle something. But he needs the job and this will give him a sense of adventure as well as getting out of Nantes. On the way back to his apartment he bumps into Lola. It turns out that he knew Lola when both were younger, and he's still in love with her. Lola liked Roland as a friend, but her real love was, and still is, Michel.

The movie amiably wanders around Nantes, winding its way toward a resolution of everybody's stories, and does so in a pleasantly brief 90 minutes. Directed by Jacques Demy, Lola is a sort of precursor to Demy's later The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Personally, I prefer the later movie, since the plot feels more cohesive. Lola isn't bad by any means, and it's got lovely black-and-white cinematography of Nantes. Lola is definitely worth one watch if you haven't seen it before.