Les demoiselles de Rochefort

(with apologies to Jonathan Rosenbaum...)

Watching the Hollywood musicals of Astaire and Kelly, one can't help but marvel at the skill and precision of the dancing and the mise en scene, and be buoyed by the very idea that the world could be so perfect, if only in a movie. "Rochefort" isn't perfect in the same way, but in pushing the musical to a different plane it achieves a kind of perfection, one dependent not on the talents of its cast or, as the popular Broadway musicals were, on the book & lyrics.

(Which is not to say that there isn't great music! Themes are repeated, to be sure, but Legrand's melodies delight, and there's more musical variance here than in "Umbrellas of Cherbourg".)

Musicals, like most popular entertainment, usually serve to reinforce our ideals. The 30 years since its release may have been kind, but "The Young Girls of Rochefort" is a rare thing, an entertainment that challenges, flies in the face of convention.

Of special note are the colors, delightfully absurd; the English subtitles, much of which read in perfect sync (including rhymes) with the music (a coinciding English-language verson was shot but never released); the macabre- this has to be the happiest musical with a song about an ax-murder.

The world in which this movie exists hasn't been seen on the screen before or since. Of course, all musicals are fantasy of a kind, but Demy takes it somewhere else. It is one of film's truly unique experiences.

This film often suffers by comparison to The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and unfairly so in my opinion. Because it is more upbeat, and delights directly in its status as an entertainment, it is perceived as less "serious", (i.e. lacking in intellectual rigor.) However, it shares all of the virtues of its more celebrated sister film without the heavier taste of melancholy and I think Les Demoiselles is dancier. Even the basketball players are choreographed. The iterations of the twins' song are especially fun.

It's probably pure chance that I saw this film for the first time - in the restored version by Agnes Varda - a few days after I was leafing through Demy's Collected Lyrics which have recently been published in France. It's clear from Frame #1 that this is a film to which you either have to surrender as the credits roll or squirm in embarrassment for the next two hours. Demy's 'fairy-tale' is as unashamedly full of coincidences as any Shakespeare comedy even to the extent of employing one set of twins, albeit non-identical but played by real-life sisters Catherine Deneuve and Francois Dorleac. If you're going to stop and wonder why the streets are always available for dancing in - i.e. traffic-free - or why Danielle Darrieux runs a cafe/bar which is little more than a counter, a glass roof and no substantial walls, then you're in the wrong movie. Demy loved chocolate-box movies and he complemented them with chocolate-box music from Michel Legrand - I was pleasantly surprised to realize that I already knew the main love them via its English lyric by Alan and Marilyn Bergman, You Must Believe In Spring, recorded definitively by Marlene VerPlanck - and the score, on the whole is lush without being memorable and ranging from fifties type small combo jazz to all-out string ensembles and if everyone - including Gene Kelly - except Danielle Darrieux is dubbed so what. Jacques Perrin is also on hand as a love-sick sailor, what else, and after seeing him play more or less the same role (narrator) in both Cinema Paradiso and Les Choristes the effect is like seeing a photograph of a friend acquired in middle age when he was a young man. Definitely worth a second viewing and who knows, I may even go so far as to buy the DVD.

Jacques Demy's THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT is such a special treat--so bright, light and airy, full of wonderful music and dance--that it's difficult to over-rate it or not recommend it. And yet.

Demy is a cinema artist who always verged in the precious (in my opinion he rarely toppled over), and this may cause trouble for some. His "Umbrellas of Cherbourg" has always seemed to me a heavy-handed, repetitive, sentimental downer; "Young Girls" is very nearly its polar opposite. (Demy's wife, the wonderful filmmaker Agnes Varda, has overseen the reconstruction of this classic, and we owe her quite a debt!) Michel Legrand's music here is full of jazzy, astonishing riffs and lots of melody. Accompanying it are some delightful lyrics that are translated fittingly--if not precisely--into equally delightful English. Catherine Deneuve and her late sister Francoise Dorleac are wonderful in the title roles, and they're helped immensely by the likes of Danielle Darrieux, George Chakiris, Grover Dale, Gene Kelly (yes, an American in Rochefort!), Michel Piccoli and a young and exquisitely beautiful Jacques Perrin. The dancing is a joy, as well, as you'd expect from a film that offers Chakiris, Dale and Kelly. Characters sing of their lives and lost loves, and everything--from the pastel-painted city to the gorgeously coordinated costumes--is as unbelievable yet as wonderful as an enchanted dream.

I remember enjoying the film when it first appeared. Now, it seems not only of its time but ahead of that time and so special and perfect that I suspect certain of us will want to revisit it every few years, for as many as we have left. In a word: transporting.

I just wanted to say I truly love this film and I do believe there will be a great deal of different opinions on it. My point in this post is that I have read in many places that the English language version of this film was never released and/or it's lost. This is not true at all as the first time I watched it was in English on television, late night during a stay in Brazil, with Portuguese subtitles. The catchphrase of "Je vais en Nantes, Je vais en perm' a Nantes" translated to "I'm going to Toulouse, I've nothing to lose."

The soundtrack is currently available on a fantastic new 2-CD set that replaces the long out-of-print 2 LP set, and includes the song "A Pair of Twins" in English! The LP, though, with its booklet and liner notes and pictures is a tough act to follow. Ah well.

I wish this movie would come out on DVD with both versions and greet a whole new generation of fans. Here's hoping this will happen within our lifetimes, while some of us are still young.

The Young Girls of Rochefort was an ambitious effort that paid off very generously in artistic terms but it was not as great a success in the box-office as Demy's previous "Umbrellas of Cherbourg". The score in "Rochefort" is sometimes a little repetitive but the soundtrack to me is the best one ever for a musical....or at least a French musical.