La La Land

Damien Chazelle’s La La Land drifts through Los Angeles with the brittle glamour of a city that keeps asking for one more try. At its centre are Mia Dolan and the promise she keeps making to herself, caught in a film that treats aspiration as both performance and habit. The famous canary yellow halter dress, lifted for the official poster, has become shorthand for the film’s bright, aching mood: polished, hopeful, and a touch melancholy. It is the sort of image that makes a person stand a little straighter before the music starts.