The Young Girls of Rochefort [VHS] Overview
The French director Jacques Demy scored a worldwide hit in 1964 with The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, a bittersweet candy-colored romance in which all the dialogue was set to music. Equally enchanting is the musical that reunited Demy with the star and composer of Umbrellas, Catherine Deneuve and Michel Legrand. The film is The Young Girls of Rochefort, an effervescent concoction about traveling players and dreamy-headed demoiselles in a seaside town. Deneuve and her real-life sister, Françoise Dorléac (who died in a car accident not long after the movie was made), play twins who fantasize about life in Paris. But before they leave town, they are distracted by the weekend fair and its colorful singers and dancers. They're also destined to meet an American composer--gloriously, it's Gene Kelly, carrying the aura of classic MGM musicals in his lighter-than-air wake. He was 55 at the time, but much younger in movie years. (Another American, George Chakiris, also dances his way through the film.) Legrand's music isn't as powerful as his Cherbourg score, and some of the choreography would fit right into an Austin Powers discotheque sequence. And the costumes--well, the excesses of '60s mod designs have not aged well. Yet the crazy hairstyles and vinyl boots fit right into the film's sense of gleeful fun. There is a sunny, daffy spirit to this movie that becomes positively infectious. It deserves to be better known. (Try to catch a widescreen version, if possible.) --Robert Horton
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