This rarely-shown classic of the French New Wave-an audacious film debut by Jacques Demy-belongs very much to the "poetic neorealism" of the sixties, that is, romantic cynicism in the tradition of René Clair and Max Ophuls, reworked into something wholly modern, wholly original. "Lola crystallizes past and present into an anamorphic reflection of everyone's own personal experiences of love.... The form is that of a fable, written around the attractive character of a nightclub dancer (Anouk Aimee) who never gives up hope that the lover who left her with a baby seven years ago will one day return, a rich man. The film is dedicated to Max Ophuls, and like La Ronde works itself out through a systematic series of encounters.... Within this framework of coincidence and contracted time, Demy offers a composite portrait of Lola at various stages in her life. This is the more extraordinary considering that there isn't a single flashback, and that the other characters are used to harmonize with the time-pattern without losing any of their own individuality. Just as Cécile (Annie Duperoux) incarnates Lola's past, her mother (stylishly played by the incomparable Elina Labourdette) symbolizes Lola's future.... Demy rings the same sort of changes on his style.... The film, in fact, breaks every textbook rule without once sacrificing grace or truth to the particular gaiety of its fairy-tale logic" (Peter John Dyer, Sight and Sound). The film owes much to the sun-struck camerawork of Raoul Coutard.