George is unemployed, broke, about to be drafted to Vietnam, and suddenly madly in love with the divine Lola, a woman he has only briefly glimpsed. Now George searches for his potential amou... Read allGeorge is unemployed, broke, about to be drafted to Vietnam, and suddenly madly in love with the divine Lola, a woman he has only briefly glimpsed. Now George searches for his potential amour through the City of Angels.George is unemployed, broke, about to be drafted to Vietnam, and suddenly madly in love with the divine Lola, a woman he has only briefly glimpsed. Now George searches for his potential amour through the City of Angels.
- Gerry
- (as Tom Fielding)
- Girl Hippie
- (as Hilary Thompson)
- Spirit Band Member
- (uncredited)
- Spirit Band Member
- (uncredited)
- Spirit Band Member
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaHarrison Ford was Jacques Demy's first choice for the main character instead of Gary Lockwood, but Columbia didn't want Ford, saying he wouldn't make any money. Demy's wife Agnès Varda shot a screen test of Ford, clips of which are included in her documentary The Beaches of Agnès (2008).
- Quotes
[last lines]
George Matthews: I just wanted to tell her that I loved her. I just wanted her to know that I wanted to try to begin again. You know what I mean? That I was, I just wanted her to know that I was going to try. Yeah, it sounds stupid, doesn't it? But, I can, you know. I mean, I personally can. Always try, you know. Yeah, always try. Yeah, always try.
- ConnectionsFeatured in Los Angeles Plays Itself (2003)
- SoundtracksThe Moving Van
(uncredited)
Written by Ed Cassidy, Jay Ferguson, John Locke, Mark Andes and Randy California
Performed by Spirit
It's a window to a world that - unlike ours on this side bogged by history and relics that solemnly demand memory - is still new, rife for discovery, exploration, guises, mystery. And this is the eye that Demy brings to LA as he has the man drive around streets in his convertible for the sheer exhilaration of floating through a place that hasn't exhausted its potential. It's not so much a matter of style or sightseeing as one of inhabiting life with unfettered presence.
Along the way it becomes an opportunity to float through glimpses of Vietnam-era America about to give way to Nixon and more bitterness, as vital a document of the era as Zabriskie Point. The notion of heady freedom in the air and yet a telephone call about being drafted can send you off to a jungle death at any moment. Made more evocative by the fact that it captures uncertain life now and not - like The Dreamers - as some dutiful relic of important times.
But for Demy this is something he finds there and commits to depict. His fascination is the return to a place he has already known - in his case through film noir movies - we see this marvelously as our smitten schmuck decides on a whim to follow the mysterious woman in the white shawl, he flips the radio switch in his car and the whole scene is now suffused with sultry noir smoke with sexual mystery that beckons all the way up to her mansion in the suburbs.
He an architect - someone who aspires to build things that concretely stand up in time - swimming hapless in the transience of undecided life in his fancy car, stunned in his path by too much horizon ahead. She a model - posing for seductive glimpses of her that only see a pretty body - burdened by too many glimpses she carries from her past, stunned in her path by too much horizon behind.
So he watches her all the way up to the hills, comes to watch her again in the sex shop she models for, snaps images of her but they reveal nothing. But they decide to meet again that night and in a way that we get to know her as more than image and this makes life fluid again, recalls the past, makes it face itself as transient, and in the end sets her free from the confines of frame and on her journey of return to where her kid awaits while he's left with memory of that night.
We have known her all along of course, she's Lola from a film made a decade prior by Demy, now tired around the eyes by the dust that settles on life; among the photos is one from those more carefree days in the cabaret in Nantes.
And so this is the crux of it, the return through images - watching - into some kind of life to know the distance. For Demy it's the return to something he filmed, for us to something we may have seen. The man in fact recalls the protagonist of Lola; you can imagine him imagining Lola imagining him.
It's one of the most poignant movies on breakups, the anxious spaciousness of youth and those nights when sleeping alone hits the hardest.
See Lola and this one, wonderful examinations of transience. The Before Sunrise/Sunset films are their image posed for but they end up with the pose.
- chaos-rampant
- May 23, 2015
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Details
- Release date
- Countries of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- Das Fotomodell
- Filming locations
- 15 Outrigger St, Marina Del Rey, California, USA(George's house)
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Budget
- $1,000,000 (estimated)