Tear Jerker / La La Land

• When Mia receives a very rare call back audition, she goes in expecting more than her typical disinterested audience of producers. Instead, she barely has time to get two words out before they cut her off and tell her to leave. It's so abrupt, especially after being built up into something bigger than normal, that you just want to give her a hug.
• After the Time Skip, Sebastian happily introduces the band playing at his club the night Mia walks in until he lays eyes on her. The look he then gives is heartbreaking as he slowly walks over to the piano and starts off with "Mia & Sebastian's Theme".
  • There's also the reveal after Mia's Fantasy Sequence that she and Sebastian did not get together like she'd just envisioned as he played, which is all the more tear-jerking after seeing how happy their future together could've been.
• After Mia's one-woman show, she's backstage sitting in the dark as she listens to the people filing out. She overhears two people laughing at her, saying "don't quit your day job" and this starts her on her Despair Event Horizon. Thankfully a casting director turns out to have attended the play and gives Mia an audition.
  • A major one just after this, when Mia's sobbing that nobody turned up and she won't be able to pay back the theatre. Anyone who's put themselves out there for a dream and been humiliated can relate.
• Mia's audition where she's in the middle of doing a pretty good job of getting emotional - only for someone to interrupt it to take a phone call. The scene comes from something that actually happened to Ryan Gosling. You can see Mia trying to keep going but she gets a slow realisation that it's no use.
• "Audition (The Fools Who Dream)". That entire song, from start to finish, is the emotional climax of the movie, and Emma Stone nails it.

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