This is not an example of an American-French New Wave movie. There are elements of French New Wave, but overall, the Model Shop is an empty 90 minute movie about two central characters that nobody can relate to. George is a cheat, a liar, a deadbeat, and not interesting. Lola is sexy but dull. Both characters lose the audience before they can get to the third act. Only then does the movie turn into anything that reflects a French film. But by then, it is too late. The saving graces of this movie is how the filmmakers showcased the streets of a Los Angles from the 1970's that no longer exists, cameo by Fred Willard and the final 45 seconds of the movie where we actually see a brief moment of redemption.

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.

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.

Jacques Demy has one hell of a sense of humor; he took Anouk Aimee to California and signed up a team of Sequoias to play opposite her, in support of Gary Redwood (oops, sorry, Lockwood). This has to set some kind of record for the most wooden screen acting EVER. By comparison Lola, the earlier Demy film featuring Aimee as the same character, was a masterpiece to rank alongside Citizen Kane. Actually Lola was a pretty good 'small' movie and it's nigh on impossible to believe that Model Shop is the work of the same man. Aimee is, of course, a fine actress and was well established at the time she made Lola but here it's a case of one filet mignon and a handful of low-grade hamburgers. Don't waste your time.