La La Land (12A, 132 mins, ★★★★)
In his big-screen musical La La Land, Damien Chazelle does for Los Angeles what Woody Allen did for New York: he strings the city with fairy lights and tinkling pianos and the dogged possibility of romance. And just as infatuation can bathe a lover’s unique flaws in charm, so even a traffic gridlock on the LA freeway becomes the scene of an opening mass dance number to the buoyant strains of Another Day of Sun.
Mia (Emma Stone) and Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) first meet as irritated drivers amid this throb of car engines. Their hostility abates with each chance encounter until finally they stand together looking down on the city sunset while Seb sings lines such as: “This could never be / You’re not the type for me” and Mia counters: “You’re right, I’d never fall for you at all” – lines which, in the proud tradition of screen musicals, we know are fated to mean just the opposite.
