It amazes me how different this Demy musical from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg that was released 3 years earlier. Whilst not a single word of Cherbourg's dialogue is spoken and rather sung, The Young Girls of Rochefort's musicality stems from its choreographed, highly-coordinated musical numbers and mellifluous jazz melodies that reverberate throughout. To my surprise, and delight, the lyrics mostly rhyme, even in English! Again, really can't express how much La La Land is indebted to Jacques Demy and especially this one: the gleeful, prolonged musical number that introduces us to the movie; the way the songs are turned into refrains hummed across the film; some clarinet playing felt very reminiscent of "Summer Montage/Madeline"; and I felt though I could hear some tunes from Justin Hurwitz's "Someone in the Crowd" in Michel Legrand's "A Pair of Twin"; and, honestly, I'd like to believe so! In fact, the entire movie is basically about that someone you're bound to meet and fall in love with.
At the centre stage, we have the twins Delphine (Catherine Deneuve) and Solange Garnier (Françoise Dorléac), the former is a dancer who gives ballet lessons and the latter teaches music classes and writes music pieces as well. They live in Rochefort, where every guy sketches, in his head or even literally, his "feminine ideal," while every girl longs to find "l'homme de sa vie." Dissimilar to the grounded, down-to-earth approach Demy took to craft his Umbrellas of Cherbourg, this one lurches into the fantastical visuals and exuberant colours straight away and carries on with that almost relentlessly. But, of course, in a giddy world where music is the driving force of love, and dancing is so graceful and expressive it's calligraphy in motion, it shouldn't come as a surprise Demy embraces this to the hilt, with a film wrought with delightfully ridiculous stuff: Daphine and Maxence yearn for each other although they've never met, and always only inches away from running across each other; her twin sister, Solange, falls in love at first sight with an American, Andy Miller (played by none other than the effortlessly charismatic Gene Kelly); and Yvonne Garnier, the twins' mother, and Simon Dame are mutually pining for each other after being 10 years apart while all that time they were both living in Rochefort not long after they went their separate ways. Oh, and did I mention that the reason they split up is that Dame is a silly name and Yvonne wouldn't accept to be called "Madame Dame"?
That said, and although the sense of darkness here is no near as intense as it is in Cherbourg, Demy still manages to imbue this film with just enough heavy undertones to make it stick and to flesh-out his characters even more. There's a subplot revolves around an axe murderer that makes one wonder what if Guillaume's attempts to marry Daphine unwillingly were taken to the extreme. On a less darker note, we have Étienne and Bill, an inseparable duo - even likened to Jules et Jim by the twins - whose love is always unrequited, assuming they're capable of loving sincerely and earnestly in the first place. If I had any issues with this film would be its relative dearth of musical numbers in its second half, losing an ounce of momentum as a result. Other than that, I think I enjoyed it even more than The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. The Young Girls of Rochefort is an enchanting romantic farce where it's all written in the stars, which, one day, will align.
At the centre stage, we have the twins Delphine (Catherine Deneuve) and Solange Garnier (Françoise Dorléac), the former is a dancer who gives ballet lessons and the latter teaches music classes and writes music pieces as well. They live in Rochefort, where every guy sketches, in his head or even literally, his "feminine ideal," while every girl longs to find "l'homme de sa vie." Dissimilar to the grounded, down-to-earth approach Demy took to craft his Umbrellas of Cherbourg, this one lurches into the fantastical visuals and exuberant colours straight away and carries on with that almost relentlessly. But, of course, in a giddy world where music is the driving force of love, and dancing is so graceful and expressive it's calligraphy in motion, it shouldn't come as a surprise Demy embraces this to the hilt, with a film wrought with delightfully ridiculous stuff: Daphine and Maxence yearn for each other although they've never met, and always only inches away from running across each other; her twin sister, Solange, falls in love at first sight with an American, Andy Miller (played by none other than the effortlessly charismatic Gene Kelly); and Yvonne Garnier, the twins' mother, and Simon Dame are mutually pining for each other after being 10 years apart while all that time they were both living in Rochefort not long after they went their separate ways. Oh, and did I mention that the reason they split up is that Dame is a silly name and Yvonne wouldn't accept to be called "Madame Dame"?
That said, and although the sense of darkness here is no near as intense as it is in Cherbourg, Demy still manages to imbue this film with just enough heavy undertones to make it stick and to flesh-out his characters even more. There's a subplot revolves around an axe murderer that makes one wonder what if Guillaume's attempts to marry Daphine unwillingly were taken to the extreme. On a less darker note, we have Étienne and Bill, an inseparable duo - even likened to Jules et Jim by the twins - whose love is always unrequited, assuming they're capable of loving sincerely and earnestly in the first place. If I had any issues with this film would be its relative dearth of musical numbers in its second half, losing an ounce of momentum as a result. Other than that, I think I enjoyed it even more than The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. The Young Girls of Rochefort is an enchanting romantic farce where it's all written in the stars, which, one day, will align.