La La Land (2016)
Directed by Damien Chazelle
Mia, an aspiring actress, serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and Sebastian, a jazz musician, scrapes by playing cocktail party gigs in dingy bars, but as success mounts they are faced with decisions that begin to fray the fragile fabric of their love affair, and the dreams they worked so hard to maintain in each other threaten to rip them apart.
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As their fortunes start to seesaw, the film acquires some of the stormy turbulence of “A Star Is Born,” as well as glimmers of the doubt and disconnection of “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.”
It pays homage to musicals like “Singin’ in the Rain” and Jacques Demy's “ The Umbrellas of Cherbourg ” without every directly mimicking them.
In films like 1964's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and 1967's The Young Girls of Rochefort, he fused the fancifulness of old Hollywood song-and-dance productions with the soul-searing emotions brought on by broken hearts and dreams too big to bear fruit.
So, too, the lush, lushly colored The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort, by French movie musical man Jacques Demy.
With unmistakable shades of Jacques Demy's "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" and "The Young Girls of Rochefort" written into its DNA, "La La Land" imagines a reality where singing and dancing is as natural as breathing.
Not everyone loves musicals, though, and La La Land won't seduce anyone who thinks The Sound of Music is grotesquely corny, or that The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is some dusty old foreign film where nothing much happens.
But does all the referencing and homage—and not just to Demy, but also to Golden Age Tinseltown productions like An American in Paris, jazz greats like Miles Davis, and even (in the film's funniest scene) the English new-wave band A Flock of Seagulls—add up to much of anything original?
Singin' in the Rain is saluted, An American in Paris is saluted.
Indeed, even if it had only lived up to the memory of all its many references it would be something special — Chazelle nods to the likes of “Top Hat,” “Singin’ in the Rain,” “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” and “An American in Paris,” and more, after all.
Of the many inspirations for La La Land—Chazelle clearly knows his An American in Paris and his Annie Hall, too—none echo so loudly as Jacques Demy’s 1964 masterpiece , Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg), as well as its lesser sibling, Les Demoiselles de Rochefort.
The camerawork is cleverly evocative of “An American in Paris” and “Umbrellas of Cherbourg.”
And throughout “La La Land,“ there are references to many musicals, from the faux Paris dance finale of “An American in Paris” and the career trajectory melodrama of the 1954 version of “A Star is Born,” as well as the dream ballet from “Oklahoma” and the jazz club scenes from “Funny Face.”
At the Griffith Observatory, where Sebastian and Mia go after having just seen it in “Rebel Without a Cause,” they enter the planetarium and are swept up into the stars, and it’s a transcendently goofy, gorgeously blissed-out moment.
The pair goes to see “ Rebel Without a Cause ” (ending in one of the most magical scenes in years) and films like “ Casablanca ” and “Bringing Up Baby” are name-dropped.
The couple will later rendezvous at a screening of Rebel Without a Cause, but their date is cut short when the celluloid combusts (sell-by date passed indeed).
And Chazelle is fearless about shaping moments that some might find corny: In one of the most astonishing dance sequences, Mia and Sebastian, inspired by a viewing of Rebel Without a Cause, sneak into the Griffith Observatory after hours and literally drift off the ground and into a field of stars.
It also uses self-aware humor, a vivid candy-colored palette, and a series of iconic LA settings, from the Angels Flight funicular to Griffith Observatory, where Rebel Without A Cause set its most famous sequence.
It’s a charming setup that veers from a house party to the Warner Bros. lot and eventually to an old movie house playing “Rebel Without a Cause,” wherein the projector hits a snag just as they lock lips.
It pays homage to musicals like “Singin’ in the Rain” and Jacques Demy's “ The Umbrellas of Cherbourg ” without every directly mimicking them.
At the climax of Mia and Sebastian’s first dance together — perhaps the film’s finest sequence — the camera cranes up, just like it did when Gene Kelly spun around in Singin’ in the Rain.
Singin' in the Rain is saluted, An American in Paris is saluted.
It's openly aimed at cinephiles who recognize the many overt Singin' in the Rain references, and feel a little internal flutter when its characters stroll across a studio backlot, surrounded by the accoutrements of moviemaking before bursting into song and dance.
Does it reinvent or improve upon “Singin’ in the Rain”, “A Star is Born”, “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” and the legions of classic films and musicals it references, borrows from?
The natural comparisons will pour in for “Singin’ in the Rain,” “West Side Story” and just about any other big time movie musical you can think of.
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In films like 1964's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and 1967's The Young Girls of Rochefort, he fused the fancifulness of old Hollywood song-and-dance productions with the soul-searing emotions brought on by broken hearts and dreams too big to bear fruit.
So, too, the lush, lushly colored The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort, by French movie musical man Jacques Demy.
With unmistakable shades of Jacques Demy's "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" and "The Young Girls of Rochefort" written into its DNA, "La La Land" imagines a reality where singing and dancing is as natural as breathing.
But Chazelle also is chasing the sweetly melancholic rapture of the French New Wave master Jacques Demy, whose Michel Legrand-scored ’60s classics, “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” and “The Young Girls of Rochefort,” set the rhythm for this movie’s dreamy mélange of the lyrical and the everyday.
Taking its cues from classic Hollywood tropes and candy-colored French musicals such as “The Young Girls of Rochefort,” “La La Land,” a simple boy-meets-girl story set in today’s Los Angeles, is a sumptuous treat, all richly hued midcentury dresses, dazzling lighting and whimsical set pieces.
Chazelle's heart, and color sense, really belongs to the Jacques Demy musicals "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" and "The Young Girls of Rochefort," with their working-class daydreams of true love and narratives of missed opportunity.
It isn’t the opening dance number on a jammed Los Angeles freeway interchange, or the surreal extended homage to “The Band Wagon” and “Singin’ in the Rain.”
But then "La La Land" isn't trying to be "The Band Wagon."
At the climax, Chazelle pulls it all together with a what-if musical fantasy evoking visual and conceptual aspects of the "American in Paris" ballet, the "Girl Hunt" sequence from another, even greater Minnelli film, "The Band Wagon," the "Broadway Ballet" from "Singin' in the Rain" and more.
One sequence, which is shot in an extended, one-shot take overlooking the city of Los Angeles, has a similar budding romantic vibe as Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse‘s Central Park dance in The Band Wagon .
He makes allusions to Singin' in the Rain (1952), The Band Wagon (1953), Funny Face (1957), The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), and more.
The climax is like one of those long ballet sequences in Minnelli's An American in Paris or The Band Wagon, beautiful, and imagining what life might have been like if the lovers had done everything correctly, but then it ends on a more Demy-like note, bittersweet.
Anyone who has ever splashed through puddles in tribute to Gene Kelly or sighed with blissful contentment at Funny Face will adore La La Land.
And throughout “La La Land,“ there are references to many musicals, from the faux Paris dance finale of “An American in Paris” and the career trajectory melodrama of the 1954 version of “A Star is Born,” as well as the dream ballet from “Oklahoma” and the jazz club scenes from “Funny Face.”
Envuelta en un lustroso atuendo que evoca, desde luego, las películas musicales de Jacques Demy (Los paraguas de Cherburgo, 1964), Vincent Minelli (An American in Paris, 1951) o Stanley Donen (Funny Face, 1965), la película de Chazelle oscila entre la alegre vivacidad y la profunda melancolía, apoyada por el score y canciones de Justin Herwitz, pero su esencia esta más vinculada al espíritu de los musicales de Rene Clair (Le Million, 1931) o el pretendido naturalismo espontáneo del Woody Allen de Todos dicen que te amo (1996), películas en las que una noción de “sinceridad” predomina sobre el rigor técnico de la pirotecnia.
Or maybe you’ll hold out until Chazelle can’t think of anything better to do than stick balloons in Stone’s hands like Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face.
, Funny Face , A Star is Born , The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (particularly) — there are nods to them all.
He makes allusions to Singin' in the Rain (1952), The Band Wagon (1953), Funny Face (1957), The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964), The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), and more.
Going back from there to the leg-shaking mastery of Fred Astaire in the 1930s and 1940s, there’s not a lot in between – “Grease” (1978), “Hair” (1979) and “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” (1964) – to give a kick about.
While we're not negating the power of West Side Story , the joy of Grease , the banging tunes of Chicago - the film pays homage to all of these - in terms of a modern singalong with wisdom, heart, laughs and something to say, La La Land takes them all on, resulting in a feelgood romantic comedy packed with intelligence, and which could elicit tears from a robot.
The sentiment has the audacity to compare writer/director Chazelle's millenial charmer LA LA LAND to actually amazing musicals, presumably in the realm of West Side Story, The King and I, Grease, and even Chicago.
Instead think of Grease and Rocky Horror and Moulin Rouge .
El director ha convertido una premisa bastante simple en una tremenda experiencia para todos los sentidos, que constantemente te hace recordar y viajar a los tiempos de musicales clásicos como Singin’ In the Rain, Grease, Les demoiselles of Rochefort, West Side Story y hasta Moulin Rouge!
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“That’s the window,” struggling actress Mia delightedly tells struggling jazz pianist Sebastian in Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, “that Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman looked out in Casablanca.”
(There’s a “Casablanca” reference later in the film, too).
She barely makes rent by working at a coffee shop on the Warner Bros. lot, near the make-believe apartment window from which Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman wistfully looked out in Casablanca.
The pair goes to see “ Rebel Without a Cause ” (ending in one of the most magical scenes in years) and films like “ Casablanca ” and “Bringing Up Baby” are name-dropped.
Mia, portrayed by the luminous Emma Stone , is a struggling actress and aspiring playwright, who works in a coffee shop on the Warner Bros. lot that is, as she loves to point out, across the street from portions of the set from Casablanca.
Peter Bogdanovich followed up several ’70s successes — most notably Last Picture Show — with the notorious 1975 flop At Long Last Love, a blatant attempt to ape 1930s musicals.
On the other hand, in its best moments, in those quiet scenes when Stone flashes her eyes at no one in particular, or when the essential loneliness of Hollywood asserts itself — the H'wood of Nathanael West, Raymond Chandler, Raymond Carver, or Elmore Leonard — Chazelle's dream of finding love in Los Angeles can be seen briefly, in between the echoes of At Long Last Love, as the gentlest of tone poems.