Duas Garotas Românticas

It's hard to put your finger on exactly what it is about the atmosphere of Jacques Demy's musicals that's so - well - appealing, but "The Young Girls of Rochefort" opens with a pretty big clue: the dancers assemble on what looks like a funny kind of suspension bridge, when suddenly the platform lifts off (as does Michel Legrand's music), to float over the water to the other side. The kids (including "West Side Story"'s George Chakiris) dance away as they drift along in mid-air, giving us the perfect metaphor for what Demy's about to offer: a sunny bagatelle that sets you free from gravity, but which is clearly - well - a little mechanical.

Or perhaps "artificial" is a better word - Demy's always straightforward about what he's doing, and the play of artifice in "Rochefort" is one of its peculiar charms. He doesn't seem to care that the gorgeous Catherine Deneuve and her real-life sister, Francoise Dorleac, aren't really dancers (or that even the "real" dancers are sometimes slightly out of sync) - they simply carry on with their numbers through sheer star power and happy sang-froid. As do their characters - what might count as tragedy in an American musical is always merely accepted in Demy ("The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" being the ultimate example). Only "Rochefort" is about tragedies constantly being averted or diverted - if "Umbrellas" was drenched in a perpetual rain shower, "Rochefort" is pure sun.

Gene Kelly is also on hand to do a few cameos as Francoise's love interest - and his main dance is a charming, quick-time take on what he used to do on a much broader canvas. George Chakiris is, as we remember from "West Side Story", a charming dynamo; Danielle Darrieux is her usual sublime self; and keep an eye out for a young Michel Piccoli as the ardent Monsieur Dam. Michel Legrand's score, again as usual, relies a bit too heavily on its big theme - but it's also about as jazzily sophisticated as musical scores ever got. The choreography doesn't offer any breakthroughs, but there are some charming sequences which are nearly as through-danced as "Umbrellas" was through-sung.

Altogether a charmer - big wigs, even bigger hats, and an exquisite pastel palette - what's not to like?

'Girls of Rochefort' would amount to not much more than a mawkish, extremely sentimental film, if one only looked at the surface. But fortunately an original French New Waver made this (quite non-new-wavish) film and there's definitely more here if you care to look. Like its companion piece, the more popular 'Umbrellas of Cherbourg,' 'Girls of Rochefort' contains and exists to hint at and coelesce surprisingly hidden meanings behind the vulgarity and overstatement. Yes! Believe it or not these two films contain (much like the more obvious case of Jaques Tati's comedies) in their style, some of the deepest and I believe quite intentional (judging by the absolutely systematic understated style of Demy's first film 'Lola' which magnificently proves he can handle that 'understatement business' whenever it suits him) criticism of petty bourgeois values ever put on film. As for Legrand's music, it is sometimes great, sometimes extremely annoying to the point of nausea. Whether or not it was intended to actually do what it does in fact do--make the general public like it at its face and the 'artsy' people disgusted to a certain point, so they can imagine they're seeing Marxist criticism in it--will of course determine Demy's stature as either a premeditated master of cinema or a master in retrospect. Either way, mastery is the name of the game, and like the best American musicals these two flicks lend themselves to quite a bit of welcome ambiguity. As for purely visual delights: where else can you see both Francoise Dorleac and younger sister Catherine Deneauve,in their prime, blessing the screen simultaneously with their exquisite beauty?

Suspending belief and just settling back to enjoy and laugh at the high camp of this unusual musical film is a pre-requisite.

Suspending, indeed, is the way the film starts and ends, with the travelling players and their vehicles travelling on the Rochefort-Martrou Transporter Bridge built 1898-1900; only about twenty of these unusual bridges were built worldwide, and half survive with some still in use. This bridge was refurbished in 1994 and is in use in the summer months. Suspending might, too, have been the end for the axe-murderer, but we are not told.

The French Navy school, the home for the many sailors seen in the film, was Le Centre Ecole de l'Aéronautique Navale (CEAN). No more sailors like Maxence, and no more sailors' hats with their red pompons though, as the French Navy pulled out of Rochefort by 2002 after a presence that had lasted 336 years. The ribbon on the sailors' hats reads EN ROCHEFORT - Ecole Navale Rochefort.

The primary colours of the film are a defining aspect and the sunshine helps enormously; who would not want to visit Rochefort for a holiday? The Mayor will be very happy with the film's being shown again to a new generation at London's British Film Institute.

With dancing sailors and young, lithe dancers, the different groups wearing matching clothes, the film is very high camp and will have some appeal to a gay audience for sure!

The whole is colourful froth and pretty harmless fun.

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.