This director is ROMANTIC! I think he rightly shows the astonishing contrast between love being generated by complete chance and fleeting encounter - with its lasting consequence and possibly enduring devotion. I just loved it.
One of the things that is so winning about this movie (also true of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg) is how very modest the characters -- and the movie - are.
The characters are sincere - if they lie, they apologize later - and unafraid to say when they are greatly moved -- and when they aren't.
I think both movies wonderfully portray mother - daughter relationships - and both are quite sympathetic to men as well as women.
How often do you see movies that show the truth of men's emotions wracked by romantic feelings (rather than solely lust) - sometimes returned and sometimes not? Very seldom.
In some ways, I prefer Lola to Umbrellas because the plot is more ingenious, the vividly drawn characters more numerous - so there is more to engross one. (On the other hand, by concentrating on just the love for one woman, Umbrellas creates an agony in the viewer that is more powerful than any feeling in Lola).
Just see it - and you'll see many disparate pieces pull together in a wonderfully satisfying, utterly charming, wonderful romantic tale.
Lola and Umbrellas make me anxious to see the Young Girls of Rochefort.
