You know how with some movies you are already liking quite a lot and finding so much to latch on to emotionally - and in this case just the whole experience of how much unabadhed joy and love is there from Demy and the performers? Sometimes you need that one thing to tip it over into the "ahh ok, I'm surely in love with this" and... what I'm trying to say here is that when in a movie (any movie, really, but this one most of all) a woman spills her purse and Gene Kelly is magically there with his bright smile and welcoming punim to lean down and help her pick it all up, that'll do it.
It should be said that, up front, Demy makes the comparison inevitable to Umbrellas of Cherbourg by having key characters with the same names (Deneuve and Chakiris, the former being a central figure in both), but, by and large, what's so remarkable about these two films (and just one of these for any other director would be a massive feather in a big floppy pink or yellow hat, and Demy has two) is that they do stand on their own as individual and iconoclastic takes on the movie musical.
But suffice it to say it this way (as I texted a friend halfway through who had seen it before): Cherbourg may be overall the better film as far as a more Impactful and stronger dramatic/tragic story, and Ill never forget sering it the first time in an "Art and Film" class in college... What Rochefort has though is more variety and a much more ambitious scope in exploring the revere and loneliness of the human heart and in its approach to pure homage. And frankly I can see myself returning more to Rochefort for its humor and wildly expressive color palette - not that Cherbourg didn't have that, but Rochefort feels like this artist wanted to reach further in expressing cinema style... And he succeeded.
The Young Girls of Rochefort has a wonderful cast, not just Deneuve but her sister (who, I was shocjed to discover, died shortly after filming completed), Michel Piccoli as the shop owner and who gets quite the sad song to sing at one point (and another delightful duet with Kelly), and George Chakiris (this time not in brown-face, thank goodness). What sets the mood for this so brilliantly is that one number by the sailor in the cafe, who sings of romance hopes and dreams dashed as, naturally, the rest of the cafe joins in at a point to bring the emotional point home. It's almost pretentious to say it like this, but it's a movie that is about movies about romance while also being a sumptuous love letter to romantic desires and all the pathos that goes with it.
So while its story (on first viewing) isn't particularly original, it doesn't need to be - like the brightest and freshest and most daring of the Nouvelle Vague films (and this deserves as hollowed place as the highlights of Truffaut and Godard and Chabrol and, yes, Varda), it embraces the plastic nature of cinema while finding its heart and its deeper thematic resonances. And so when it finds itself in the midst of a ... Macabre subplot (of a kind, if barely that) regarding the murder of a citizen in town who, if my translation on the Criterion disc was correct, was chopped up into pieces - and we don't see it, just the bystanders, and the cops, who, of course, sing about it - it feels for a minute of a piece with the rest of the movie. After all, how can you get too detached or brought down when everyone is singing on cue and on key and that Legrand song and Demy lyrics keep plugging away? The Young Girls of Rochefort does that miraculous task of letting us know we are watching a movie in its fantastical presentation while also feeling completely authentic in matters of the soul. That's special.
And, again, a little Gene Kelly, singing and especially dancing his perfect star tuchus off, goes a long way, and as it turns out he's a supporting player(!)
It should be said that, up front, Demy makes the comparison inevitable to Umbrellas of Cherbourg by having key characters with the same names (Deneuve and Chakiris, the former being a central figure in both), but, by and large, what's so remarkable about these two films (and just one of these for any other director would be a massive feather in a big floppy pink or yellow hat, and Demy has two) is that they do stand on their own as individual and iconoclastic takes on the movie musical.
But suffice it to say it this way (as I texted a friend halfway through who had seen it before): Cherbourg may be overall the better film as far as a more Impactful and stronger dramatic/tragic story, and Ill never forget sering it the first time in an "Art and Film" class in college... What Rochefort has though is more variety and a much more ambitious scope in exploring the revere and loneliness of the human heart and in its approach to pure homage. And frankly I can see myself returning more to Rochefort for its humor and wildly expressive color palette - not that Cherbourg didn't have that, but Rochefort feels like this artist wanted to reach further in expressing cinema style... And he succeeded.
The Young Girls of Rochefort has a wonderful cast, not just Deneuve but her sister (who, I was shocjed to discover, died shortly after filming completed), Michel Piccoli as the shop owner and who gets quite the sad song to sing at one point (and another delightful duet with Kelly), and George Chakiris (this time not in brown-face, thank goodness). What sets the mood for this so brilliantly is that one number by the sailor in the cafe, who sings of romance hopes and dreams dashed as, naturally, the rest of the cafe joins in at a point to bring the emotional point home. It's almost pretentious to say it like this, but it's a movie that is about movies about romance while also being a sumptuous love letter to romantic desires and all the pathos that goes with it.
So while its story (on first viewing) isn't particularly original, it doesn't need to be - like the brightest and freshest and most daring of the Nouvelle Vague films (and this deserves as hollowed place as the highlights of Truffaut and Godard and Chabrol and, yes, Varda), it embraces the plastic nature of cinema while finding its heart and its deeper thematic resonances. And so when it finds itself in the midst of a ... Macabre subplot (of a kind, if barely that) regarding the murder of a citizen in town who, if my translation on the Criterion disc was correct, was chopped up into pieces - and we don't see it, just the bystanders, and the cops, who, of course, sing about it - it feels for a minute of a piece with the rest of the movie. After all, how can you get too detached or brought down when everyone is singing on cue and on key and that Legrand song and Demy lyrics keep plugging away? The Young Girls of Rochefort does that miraculous task of letting us know we are watching a movie in its fantastical presentation while also feeling completely authentic in matters of the soul. That's special.
And, again, a little Gene Kelly, singing and especially dancing his perfect star tuchus off, goes a long way, and as it turns out he's a supporting player(!)