At the time Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut et al were tipping their ironic berets to pulp B-movie maestros like Fritz Lang, Edgar G Ulmer and Nicholas Rey, Jacques Delmy was making movies that blossomed from the doomed romanticism of Hollywood darlings like Vincente Minelli and Douglas Sirk. Indeed, the opening shot of his majestic, breezily sexy 1960 debut 'Lola'  feels like a direct homage to Sirk's 'Written on the Wind', as a mysterious, cowboy-hatted cad speeds through the industrial hinterland of Nantes in his shiny white Cadillac. Though as we can see from the title card, the film is actually dedicated to Max Olphüs, and with its gliding camera capturing an ensemble of beautiful dreamers trying to utmost to mask feelings of intense sorrow and regret, the legend feels more than warranted. A perpetually corseted Anouk Aimée plays the adorable but flighty title character, a coquettish cabaret dancer open to servicing the needs of the American sailors passing through the port who has been hanging on for seven years for the father of her neglected young son to return with his pockets bulging with cash. The crux of the film takes in her rekindled relationship with bookish idealist Roland Cassard (Marc Michel), an impulsive soul who's unable to lay down his roots without first knowing true love. Originally intended as a musical, the film still boasts a bold musicality to its choreography and editing, and Aimée may as well be dancing given the joyful, devil-may-care nature of her performance. And as we can see from later classics such as 'The Umbrellas of Cherbourg' or 'Les Demoiselles de Rochefort', Demy's obsession with the thrills of making and the pains of breaking human connections was fully formed from day one. David Jenkins for Time Out.