In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

This film is not the worst. Gary Lockwood as lost young architect George Matthews and Anouk Aimee as Lola, a stage name for a lost french model who works at a cheesy photo shop for erotic models.The street scenes from 1969 are quite interesting. The actress who plays Gloria died at a young age from arteriosclerosis. She also is good as a rather direction-less actress, she wants to act, but George tells her ..."I will just see you naked in a bathtub, more soap commercials"... .The sets are odd in that L.A. was still a relatively undeveloped city....its fun to see the old cars, the oil well and cheap housing George and Gloria live in right on the beach no less. Wonder where that was, in actuality, filmed. It would be interesting to compare how it looks today.George basically meets up with some friends, tries to get interested in a newspaper his friends are running, he mostly needs a distraction to prevent himself from thinking about the draft, as his father informs him that he must return to San Francisco after the weekend to be entered in to the military for Vietnam. Vietnam and its cease-fire is hinted at here by a radio broadcast, but overall you get the sense of the pointless war, the young men trying to avoid the draft.He eventually meets up again with Lola and tells her he wants to love her. She, a few years older, simply smiles. They eventually wind up at her friends nearby apartment though she is already packing to return to Paris to see her estranged son. They spend the night, and it gives George a slight sense of hope. He allows his former relationship with Gloria to evaporate, debates deserting the army, but eventually realizes, it is what it is.Aimee is good, understated here, as a rather lost and empathic character who just wants to afford a flight back to Paris. Not an intricate theme here, but worth seeing for older scenes of L.A. 8/10.

This is a bad film, French New Wave or not. While I don't love this type of movie, even as an example of the genre, it's bad. French Writer/Director Jacques Demy (who I have loved in several of his other films) makes a mostly aimless film about a guy who has the personality of a paper towel...and it's all set in America. The guy is Gary Lockwood and I felt a bit sorry for him in the movie as he really had very little to do except exist as well as do things that rarely made sense. Emoting in any way certainly was NOT in the cards for this guy!The film begins with Lockwood in bed with his girlfriend (who, coincidentally, has almost no personality either). There's a knock at the door as finance company guys are about to repossess his car. He gets them to agree to wait until the end of the day and Lockwood spends much of the beginning of the film visiting various acquaintances trying to bum money from them. Finally, he finds a soft touch and gets the $100 he needs, but ends up spending it on a woman he just saw as he was driving down the street (Anouk Aimée) who poses for perverts who pay her to strip. And, as a result, he can't pay for the car. I assume this is supposed to be romantic, but the guy just comes off as a leeching idiot. Plus, when he announces that he loves her even though he doesn't even know her, he seems like a real creeper! The film bears some similarities to the famous "Breathless" ("À bout de soufflé"), though unlike Jean-Paul Belmondo (who also plays a low-life), Lockwood's character has no personality and is very, very stiff (in a bad way). At least with Belmondo, he had style and a certain rogue-ish charm. But watching a similar style film with none of the positive qualities of the Godard/Truffaut film, it's a real chore to endure. And, with a plot that seems a bit recycled, the New Wave novelty can't even be respected.A dull and unconvincing film, it didn't even benefit from being bad. If it been terrible and not dull, this would have been an improvement--at least with terrible you can watch it for a laugh!

The empty lives of a would-be architect and a bored French woman collide in Jacques Demy's American film. It's not dull, but it's not easy to sit through either. What the viewer is expected to get out of this is anyone's guess. Gary Lockwood carries the film as a kid about to be drafted and Anouk Aimee plays the French woman. They're fine but Aimee's command of the English language is pretty distracting. She's very distant and it's impossible to tell if that's the actress or the character she's playing. She is of course stunning (and never looked more like Sophia Loren). The film, set in Los Angeles, makes good use of the Sunset Strip. With the terrible Alexandra Hay as Lockwood's frustrated girlfriend and Severn Darden, who has one creepy line of dialog.

I'm currently looking around for a copy of this film after learning that Jay Ferguson's 60s rock band Spirit (who I've been a fan of since the late 60s and have some original vinyl of) contributed to the OST.I'm giving it 8/10 sight unseen based on the fact that Spirit wrote some music for it, though I understand that the French director screwed it up somewhat because of his lack of communication with the cast and crew. Well that's the French for you.Looking forward to seeing the film and making a further comment based on a viewing.Keep on rockin'.