\u201cIs it nostalgic?\u201d asks Mia, the aspiring actor played by Emma Stone in the musical La Land . \u201cAre people gonna like it?\u201d She\u2019s agonising over the play she has written but this is surely the voice of the writer-director Damien Chazelle asking these questions of his movie. To which the answers would be: \u201cDuh!\u201d and \u201cOn the whole, yes.\u201d
Nostalgia permeates La Land right from the opening announcement that it has been shot in CinemaScope, the widescreen format that was prevalent in the 1950s. When Mia returns home, strolling past street murals of Chaplin and Monroe, a giant poster of Ingrid Bergman gazes down from her bedroom wall. And when she goes on a date with Sebastian (Ryan Gosling), it is to a picture palace with a light bulb-studded marquee.
Old Hollywood is as glorious and intimidating to these 21st-century lovers as it was in Pennies from Heaven when Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters danced in front of the flickering image of Astaire and Rogers, before entering the cinema screen themselves. Something similar happens in La Land when Mia and Sebastian drive up to the Griffith Observatory after watching Rebel Without a Cause ; it\u2019s as though the movie has spilled over into real life.
Sebastian is Mia\u2019s partner in nostalgia. He\u2019s a pig-headed pianist who rhapsodises about jazz and dreams of owning a club but earns a crust playing easy-listening standards. He and Mia are at the foothills of their ambitions, not always certain whether they should go on climbing or settle for life at a lower altitude. La Land asks the same question as Chazelle\u2019s previous film Whiplash : how do you keep your dreams alive without letting them kill you?
When modern directors tackle the musical genre, there can be an element of hostility present, as though they are slaying a dragon \u2013 or, more likely, a sacred cow. La Land is not volatile like Martin Scorsese\u2019s New York, New York or Lars von Trier\u2019s Dancer in the Dark. It\u2019s a middle-of-the-road confection, pretty rather than deep, which never quite makes its own mark. It takes its melancholic mood from Edward Hopper and its eye-popping colours from Jacques Demy\u2019s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. The most original moments are minor ones: glitter thrown into a hairdryer creates a small silvery blizzard, a handbag matches a row of purple wheelie bins in a back alley.
What\u2019s intriguing is that the film bestows on this stepping stone of a romance the sort of attention traditionally reserved for amour fou. It demonstrates, in a series of casually elegant dance duets beginning with a soft-shoe shuffle on a deserted back road in the Hollywood Hills, how Mia and Sebastian connect in their nostalgic reveries for the briefest of moments. Each time, they are dragged back to the present by the bleeps and blasts of the modern world \u2013 a ringtone, a smoke alarm, the chirp of an electronic fob.
The film is at its most convincing in those intimate exchanges between Gosling, with his melted eyes, and Stone, with her anime face. When it reaches for an ambitious, razzle-dazzle effect, such as in the over-complicated dance number in a traffic jam (shades of Fame ) and a poorly directed sequence in which the couple start flying like Goldie Hawn in Everyone Says I Love You , it comes across as merely ersatz. This is not, after all, a film of grand passions.
Nor is Chazelle at his most assured on a large canvas. He is an economical visual storyteller who can nail the small, telling moments. He explains in just two brief shots, for instance, exactly why Sebastian puts his ambitions on the back burner to tour with a band he hates. What Chazelle can\u2019t always do is join up the dots to give the film momentum. After a lively scene introducing Sebastian\u2019s sister (the excellent Rosemarie DeWitt), the picture rashly casts her aside, which is a mistake in such a long and underpopulated movie. It can\u2019t rely, either, on the new compositions to whoosh it along, with the exception of a tentative piano number called \u201cCity of Stars\u201d, which is first sung casually by Gosling as he strolls along a pier at night. The rest of the songs aren\u2019t heartfelt so much as Heart FM; Magic rather than magical.
It\u2019s pretty much impossible not to fantasise about that first run-in with your ex. Yes, this time, you won\u2019t be sweaty and make up-free in Sainsbury\u2019s, trying to hide the fact that you\u2019re locked out of your flat. No, you\u2019ll be cool, calm and collected, with your ridiculously gorgeous new date.
Chewing Gum \u2019s Tracey (both played and created by Michaela Coel) uses children\u2019s toys to facilitate her own fantasy, and imagines it going something like this. \u201cOh, my god! Connor? Connor! It\u2019s Tracey! Yeah, no, no I know I look different now! Yeah, I\u2019ve becomes successful! Is this wide-legged hyena your new girlfriend? Oh? I wish I could but I\u2019ve actually got to go and see Beyonc\u00e9. Yeah, I\u2019m going to fly there.\u201d
Aaaand enter the ex, just as she lifts her plastic dolly in the air zooming her off to her imaginary Beyonc\u00e9 concert. Improvised make-up, fake boyfriends, and bizarre avoidance tactics follow.
This is a relatively minor catastrophe in the life of disaster-prone Tracey, and perhaps one of the least cringe-worthy punchlines in a terrifyingly relatable episode, the first of Chewing Gum \u2019s second season. The first season included a whole host of openly horny women, scenes of mass dildo washing and jokes about \u201cthrobbing so hard it\u2019s like my vagina\u2019s got epilepsy\u201d and Coel\u2019s brilliantly dirty sitcom shows no signs of toning down in its second series. The farcical climax of the first episode involves a disabled toilet, sexy dancing, fake orgasms and a healthy dose of projectile vomiting.
This first episode takes place almost entirely within the confines of the newsagent where Tracey works, so there was little opportunity to reconnect with the hyperreal housing estate where much of the last season was set. But supporting cast members still shone in this episode \u2013 in particular Ola (played by Olisa Odele, Ola is, in Odele\u2019s own words, a \u201cNigerian diva\u201d and \u201cfull time bad bitch\u201d). There\u2019s even a cameo from Stormzy, who was a fan of the first series.
But as the show becomes more and more surreal, it only becomes more relatable. Tracey almost compulsively lies to hide her embarrassment, inevitably making every situation worse. Though you will her to stop, the impulse is undeniably familiar. After all, who hasn\u2019t told a white lie about having a date lined up to their already-taken-again ex?
Chewing Gum airs on Thursday nights at 10pm on E4.<\/p>\n

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\nSimilarity rank: 0.2\n<\/div>\n

Sentiment rank: 1.5<\/div>\n

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