Lola (Jacques Demy, 1961)

Anouk Aimée in Lola

Lola / Cécile: Anouk Aimée
Roland Cassard: Marc Michel
Michel: Jacques Harden
Frankie: Alan Scott
Madame Desnoyers: Elina Labourdette
Jeanne, Michel's Mother: Margo Lion
Cécile Desnoyers: Annie Duperoux
Claire, the Bar Owner: Catherine Lutz
Daisy: Corinne Marchand
Yvon, Lola's Son: Gérard Delaroche

Director: Jacques Demy
Screenplay: Jacques Demy
Cinematography: Raoul Coutard
Production design: Bernard Evein
Film editing: Anne-Marie Cotret
Music: Michel Legrand

The characters in Lola, as in many of Jacques Demy's films, see life as performance art. They're ready to don the mask and play the role at any moment: Lola even wears her black lace cabaret-performer costume under a trenchcoat when she's out on the street. The film opens with a poseur, the then-mysterious "cowboy" dressed in white and driving a white Cadillac convertible, who is later revealed to be Lola's missing husband, Michel. Everyone, it seems, is putting on an act, especially Mme. Desnoyers, whose constant concern with appearances has begun to rub off on her daughter, Cécile. Sometimes Demy imposes a role on his characters: The young American sailor, Frankie, hangs out with a troupe of sailors that recalls MGM musicals of the 1940s like Anchors Aweigh (George Sidney, 1945) and On the Town (Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, 1949) which starred a famous Frankie. Even the most spontaneous character in the film, Roland, wears his ennui like a costume. To my taste, this constant role-playing gets a little tiresome -- I keep wanting the characters to have an unguarded moment. Although Demy's films often seem to me to be better in retrospect than in the watching, as you work out the playful cross-references -- young Cécile's name is the same as Lola's real one, and so on -- and allusions to books and movies, there is much to be said for what's on screen, particularly Anouk Aimée's giddy, uninhibited Lola, a long way from her role in 8 1/2 (Federico Fellini, 1963) as Guido's soignée neglected wife. There's some roughness in this film, Demy's first, such as the odd fact that Alan Scott, an American actor, speaks with a non-American accent when his lines are in English -- I don't think anyone born in New Jersey would pronounce "Chicago, Illinois" the way Frankie does, so I suspect dubbing. But as self-conscious a film as it is, Lola is a rewarding one.

Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (Robert Bresson, 1945)

I doubt that I would have recognized Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne as a film by Robert Bresson if I hadn't already known it was the second feature film of his career. Its milieu, the haute bourgeoisie, is far removed from the priests, peasants, pickpockets, and prison escapees of his great later films, which also relied on non-professional actors instead of the established professionals of this film. There is even a rather lush score by Jean-Jacques Grünewald, instead of the reliance on ambient sound characteristic of the more familiar period. Clearly, something happened to Bresson's aesthetic in the six years that separate Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne from Diary of a Country Priest (1951). And yet there's something in the restraint with which Bresson films this updating of a story by Denis Diderot and in the clarity of moral vision with which he imbues it that keeps it "Bressonian." Diderot's 18th-century story is of an age with Choderlos de Laclos's Les Liasons Dangereuses, which has been filmed half a dozen times, including versions updated to the 20th century by Roger Vadim (1959) and Roger Kumble (Cruel Intentions, 1999). Diderot's and Laclos's stories both turn on the failure of the best-laid plans of vengeful lovers: Erotic obsession becomes a two-edged sword. With the help of Jean Cocteau's dialogue and well-judged performances by Maria Casares, Paul Bernard, and Elina Labourdette, Bresson maintains the tension of withheld revelations throughout the narrative in which Hélène (Casares) manipulates her former lover Jean (Bernard) into marrying Agnès (Labourdette), who is not the "impeccable" woman Hélène deceives Jean into believing her to be. The dénouement, in which Jean, having learned the truth, finds himself trapped inside his own automobile, is brilliantly staged. And even the bittersweet sort-of-happy ending feels right, if only because Bresson has revealed the inescapable cruelty of the milieu in which it takes place. I suspect that even if Bresson had gone on in this vein, rather than carving out for himself his unique place in film history, he would still be regarded as an important filmmaker.