The Young Girls of Rochefort might be the comfort movie of the French New Wave. It's certainly one of the bubbliest and most spirited -a film by Jacques Demy that follows up on his masterful The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, with which it has a lot in common -the big exception being a tone of bliss and optimism to replace bittersweet regret. It is a movie with a summer festival and big dance numbers and a broadly grinning Gene Kelly. What miseries there are in the characters are dispelled by the end -it is perhaps a purer tribute to old Hollywood musicals than Demy's last film, imbued with all of his and composer Michel Legrand's signature charms.
Set in the port town of Rochefort, the story concerns two twin sisters, Delphine and Solange played by real sisters (though not real twins) Catherine Deneuve and François Dorléac -the former blonde, the latter redheaded. They work as ballet instructors but dream of finding love and moving to Paris. Over the course of a weekend they interact with a few contenders, notably a pair of carnival workers frequenting their mother's cafe, Etienne (George Chakiris) and Bill (Grover Dale). There is also a sailor Maxence (Jacques Perrin), who falls in love with a painting of Delphine he sees in a gallery and spends the movie determined to meet her. And a bit later on, a successful composer Andy Miller (Gene Kelly) has a run-in with Solange. He happens to be friends with Simon Dame (Michel Piccoli) who owns a music shop and laments his lost love, who unbeknownst to him, is revealed to be the girls' mother Yvonne (Danielle Darrieux).
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The girls are the centre, but Demy gives each of these characters their own little storylines (and musical numbers) in which to shine and express their romantic desires. And there are quite a lot of these. The film isn't sung-through like Umbrellas of Cherbourg but it is pretty close a lot of the time, and Legrand gives each number a buoyancy that informs its performance -at least physically. Darrieux is the only actress who dubs herself -something that is particularly notable in the case of Kelly, whose singing voice is well documented, and is clearly not present during his musical moments. Though in spoken dialogue, both Kelly and Chakiris -neither native French speakers- do appear to be delivering their lines themselves. Their presence may be to lend the film a certain Hollywood musical authenticity, and Kelly in particular -either through make-up or his own Hollywood sorcery looking much like he did sixteen years prior in An American in Paris. It is something that makes it easier to overlook the significant age gap between him and Dorléac.
She and her sister are really charming in the movie, and it is a shame that Dorléac tragically died not long after shooting the film as there is every indication she might have had a career to rival Deneuve’s. The first number for the two of them, “A Pair of Twins” is one of the film’s best and the most recognizable piece, shot organically by Demy and stupendously choreographed and designed with counterpart colours and visual attitudes. This is in a dance studio, but the outdoor sequences might be more impressive, adapting group routines similar to the likes of West Side Story in real locations and atmospheres. The songs are communications of stories, and each of them -even the lesser ones- are interesting in this respect, establishing or moving along a relationship, or hinting at a plot beat as in the cases of Yvonne and Simon. Demy is perhaps not as involved as in his last movie, far more intimate and emotionally pronounced, but he captures well the essence of joy and hope in several of the musical sequences and makes such great use of his picturesque setting you wonder what is so appealing to the young girls about Paris instead.
The movie’s vibrancy is delightful and carries you along through a couple mediocre songs and plot beats. The visuals are never not interesting though, and each cast member is wholly committed -Chakiris is a particular standout for his buoyancy. Legrand, who at one point is name-checked in one of his own songs, keeps the tenor of the music generally sweet and promising, even in the numbers characterized by regret or sadness. Maxence in pursuit of his mystery woman isn’t ever bitter or forlorn -it is a foregone conclusion that he will find her (which he does just at the end of the film). it runs almost entirely on good vibes and there is something very wholesome in that. The Young Girls of Rochefort is not a profound or emotionally complex musical; it is in love with the idea of being in love and pursuing ambitions, and won’t hear anything of the messy or depressing realities of such things. Demy can get away with it, having already made that film. It’s a nice, charming time, I find myself wishing the best for each of its characters, and sometimes that is all a movie needs to accomplish.
Criterion Recommendation: Pain and Glory (2019)
Pedro Alomodóvar’s most personal film and Antonio Banderas’s best performance is overdue for inclusion in the Criterion Collection. Pain and Glory is a superb film about a man and an artist -a filmmaker specifically- looking back on his life and career in what could be his final days due to a medical emergency. Using some flashback to detail his childhood experiences, atmosphere, and burgeoning sexuality, the film remains largely present-oriented in its reflections, as Banderas’s Salvador evaluates his works and his relationships, and copes in irresponsible ways with his declining health and his regrets. It is a movie of heartache and loss, not just of the physical kind but the psychological -and Banderas plays it with a palpable tenderness that conveys both his own sentiments and that of Alomodóvar drawing on his feelings in the screenplay. Like many an Alomodóvar film, it is visually very crisp, even in Salvador’s small Madrid apartment to say nothing of the pretty scenery in his childhood home in Paterna. There’s a fierce sense that Alomodóvar in putting all of this on-screen in such a blatant way is striving to understand himself, perhaps the goal of any great autobiographical film. And certainly one that deserves its laurels from Criterion.
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