Romance as a genre encompasses dreamy passions and interconnecting love affairs. LOLA is as a whole, the embodiment of romance rising in the flesh as Anouk Aimee, clearly posing as Venus/Aphrodite and with a heart to end all hearts and a physicality that is alluring, dark, carnal, but a dream morphing into an ethereal reality. She, as Lola, is a fallen woman who doesn't wallow too much over her fate but enchants everyone who crosses her path; she pines for the man who left her with child -- Miohel -- while Roland Cassard, who would later marry Catherine Deneuve's character in THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG, floats in as one of Lola's many suitors, which also include an American sailor. Lola is pure stream of consciousness made breezy romance, barely having its plot but existing purely on the notion that somehow these characters have their counterparts and are meant to meet them along the way, even when there will be heartbreak and some important decisions to be made. Jacques Demy, to me one of the greatest romantics of the 20th Century, created his trilogy with this excellent little piece that most certainly still has all the qualities of a musical without music and hasn't aged as it approaches its 50th year.
