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Emma Stone sings in a new trailer for La La Land, the upcoming musical romance in which she and Ryan Gosling fall in love in Los Angeles.
La La Land is an original musical from director Damien Chazelle (Whiplash) and composer Justin Hurwitz. In the film, Stone is a barista and aspiring actress, while Gosling plays a jazz musician crooning in L.A. dives. It is a classic Los Angeles story in many ways: they meet, they fall in love, and then that whole trying to make it in L.A. thing stands to jeopardize it all.
In the first trailer, which was released in July, Gosling is seen sitting at a piano, singing a gloomy tune. In the new trailer, titled "Audition," we hear Stone's dulcet voice as she sings her own song.
"Here's to the ones who dream/foolish as they may seem/here's to the hearts that ache/here's to the mess we make."
Many of the scenes are repeated from the previous trailer—we see them lean in for a kiss while riding on what appears to be Angel's Flight, for instance—but we also get a glimpse into Stone's character's life, as she irritably walks into or out of an audition, unzipping her coat to reveal a spilled coffee on her white button-up.
Chazlelle told Entertainment Weekly:
"There’s an incredible romanticism in L.A. that you don’t always see when you’re stuck in traffic on the 405. I wanted to make a big love letter to the city and focus on that push and pull that all young artists experience, between dreams and reality, which old Hollywood musicals are so good at expressing. I just love the idea of a whole emotional arc told purely visually and musically. And it’s a city that’s so filled with dreamers, most of whom won’t make it. I think there’s something poetic about that."
It's not a particularly new narrative for Los Angeles, as many films set here paint it as a city fully consumed by 'the industry,' but it sure looks pretty.
La La Land is slated to premiere at the Venice Film Festival at the end of the month before coming to theaters in December.
