The black and white here may share the sun-drenched lighting of Lola, of Demy's favoured seaside towns, but its harder edges reflect the narrative of obsessive repetition, of a gambling addiction that trumps that other repetition addictive, romance. But romance is the wrong word here--this is a film interested in other kinds of exhilaration, of an interplay between ritualised control and improvised, chance derangement. Above, that astonishing opening shot, the sheer exhilaration of camera movement pulling away from Jeanne Moreau's assured/lost gambler on the bay at dawn, one of Demy's most impressive technical tricks, both echoing and repudiating the automotive shots that bookend Lola's narrative of lost and redeemed love. Perhaps too impressive: encapsulating so much of the film that follows that much of it seems somewhat redundant. Unlike the drive towards fulfilment or loss that characterises most of Demy's films, this is a film set in the most glamorous of limbos--as usual, without judgment. But--and this is where it suffers in comparison to Demy's other films--it's also largely without the bittersweetness, joy or melancholy he elsewhere strives so relentlessly to capture.
Review of Bay of Angels
