When the first trailer for La La Land, the new musical and Damien Chazelle’s follow-up to 2014’s Whiplash, it treated us to the sandpapery baritone of Ryan Gosling, crooning a downbeat number. Now, it’s Emma Stone’s turn to handle the vocal stylings overlaying the latest promotional spot for the film, singing a track suffused with longing. It’s a fitting accompaniment to the gauzy, “Punch-Drunk Love meets 42nd Street” aesthetic on display.
From the intentional artifice of the sets to the outsized emotions running through Stone and Gosling’s entire bodies, the movie appears to embrace the old-fashioned tradition of wearing hearts on sleeves, though it’s not clear if it also adopts the “and dance shoes on feet” part of the equation. Many of the fanciful shots from the first trailer are here as well, like the two of them on wires, flying through a starlit backdrop. But it also teases the likely possibility that this film is maximally constructed to make you get all weepy, so just be prepared for that. La La Land comes out December 2.