Model Shop – Wellington Film Society

Jacques Demy, USA/France 1969, 97 minutes M Sexual themes

Like a traveler who falls in love with a place without really knowing why, Jacques Demy’s first and only American film, Model Shop, lilts around late-sixties Los Angeles looking for beauty and connection in some simple, profound ways. An emotionally lost young man (Gary Lockwood) follows a weary European model (Anouk Aimée) into the amateur studio where she gets paid to let customers take boudoir photos of her. Voyeurism, consumerism, and war are all discussed as the long smoggy day and endless auto trips across town begin to shift the course of their alienated, wistful lives. Demy captured Angelino locations galore for this heavy-hearted romance, and following his gaze across the newly minted city (the real star of the film) has all the swooning nostalgia of an old hippie travelogue from the peak of an era.
- New Beverly Cinema