Model Shop

Model Shop (1969) is a French-American drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Jacques Demy — his only film shot in the United States. Gary Lockwood plays George, an unemployed architect in Los Angeles who has just received a Vietnam draft notice and no particular plan.

He drifts through the city's freeways and sun-bleached streets trying to raise money before his car is repossessed. A woman he keeps noticing leads him to a small model shop — one of those LA establishments where men pay to photograph pin-up models. The woman is Lola (Anouk Aimée), returning from Demy's 1961 debut film: a Frenchwoman stranded in California, earning just enough to buy a ticket home. They spend one quiet night together. By morning, she is gone.

Demy built this less as a plot than as a long, slow look at a particular city at a particular moment. Viewers who like late-60s cinema that moves at the pace of a wander — more mood than event — will feel at home here. Stream Model Shop (1969) online on iFILM.