La La Land, Light House Cinema, Wolverhampton - review
'They don't make 'em like they used to' is what people used to say before they saw this film.
La La Land is not what I expected it to be. I have never sat through a film that has made me want to laugh, dance , sing and sob all at the same time. But watching this, made me all those things.
From the opening sequence of a surreal dance number in the middle of LA rush hour, to the dream-like routines of Emma Stone aka Mia and Ryan Gosling as Seb at the Griffith observatory, this film transported the audience back to a time of MGM style romance, of love stories that defy all the odds. Except this one, doesn't.
What makes the film so powerful is that though it harks back to a bygone, Golden Age of LA in the era of Casablanca, of revolutionary jazz artists taking to the stage for the first time, the tale this film actually tells is an acutely modern one. And a painful one at that.
The songs may not be the most memorable, the dancing perhaps not that polished, but they're believable. The chemistry between the couple, before they're even a couple is palpable, entertaining, and this builds just as their relationship does.
Mia wants to become an actress and has spent six years working in a coffee shop on the Warner Bros studio site just to go to the occasional casting. Seb has been down and out for a while, broke and fired from his job playing Christmas jingles at a restaurant but dreaming of opening his own jazz club. When they encounter each other, they are almost at their wits' end. But there's still hope and they seem to find it in each other.
Their romance is honestly really fun to watch. Stone brings a dorky kind of loveliness to her role as leading lady which means we're rooting for her from the beginning.Gosling has a charm that makes him endearing and sincere rather than suave and arrogant. Together it seems they are destined for a happy ending.
Seb can have his club, Mia can achieve stardom, and they can continue to love each other "always". But in the same way that Mia's ringtone interrupts the pair's first dance, whilst Seb circles a lamppost a la Singin' in the rain, we are abruptly brought back down to earth - this is real life, not a movie.
What we are left with then, the film says, is the lives we construct for ourselves, with all the set, props and new characters waiting in the wings. Diverting us away from the fantastical world of the musical, La La Land shows that life often has a script we never thought we'd write, with us becoming a leading man or lady not so different from who we were at the start.
By Jessica Labhart
