User Reviews

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?

(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.

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.

THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT is Jacques Demy's followup to his popular international success, THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG. It's not the same kind of operatic musical as it's predecessor and is much more a product of it's time (and sadly, that makes it much more inaccessible to modern audiences). What you get here is a romantic farce in the old MGM tradition, with lot's of garish 60's-style color and costumes, definitely in tune to Michel Legrand's astounding jazz score. The campy outdoor dance numbers date, but thankfully give way to dynamically orchestrated instrumental versions of Legrand's music. This is definitely a movie for those who enjoy cinematic musical comedy; it's visual appeal is undeniable and each shot is lovingly designed and framed. Deneuve and Dorleac are amazing beauties and presented in their prime, which is reason enough to enjoy the picture. Michel Legrand's score is far more complex melodically and orchestrally than his more famous one for UMBRELLAS; it's a joy to listen to. About the best compliment I can pay THE YOUNG GIRLS OF ROCHEFORT is to say that it brilliantly precedes and shines with more talent and energy than the recently released MOULIN ROUGE (a film that surprisingly has a lot in common with it). Demy doesn't need any CGI, MTV-editing or pop songs to get it's simple, lovely message across! It's very nice indeed to have a restored version on DVD of Jacques Demy's LES DESMOISELLES DE ROCHEFORT!

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.

'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.

In the little town Rochefort lives Delphine and Solange Garnier, two musical twins that teach music and dance to kids. One day, Etienne and Bill arrive in town, and need the twins help with a song and dance-number. Also, the famous piano-player Andy Miller (Gene Kelly) comes to town to help an old friend.

Jacques Demy is an incredible filmmaker and the master of the musical. Working with Catherine Deneuve (his muse?), he succeeds again and even gets Gene Kelly in on the act. This film not only has solid singing, but plenty of noteworthy choreography. And, as Demy seems quite fond of, more than a splash of color.

Jonathan Rosenbaum says the film "is loved in France but tends to be an acquired taste elsewhere." Supporting this view he cites Pauline Kael, who wrote that this film "demonstrates how even a gifted Frenchman who adores American musicals misunderstands their conventions." While this is probably not Demy's best film, trying to force it into the Hollywood box may be a mistake on Kael's part.

Definitely worth seeking out, especially now that Criterion has released it on Blu-ray as part of their incredible Demy box set.

If the 60´s were an excelent decade to explore new color matches, try new forms, and accentuate the visual part of your life in terms of Design, Fashion, and other industries, Les Demoiselles de Rochefort is one of the brightest examples of the study in color applied to a movie. In this film, every color is studied to the full, its possibilities enlightened the sets and made us enter a world of tasteful fantasy. Director Jacques Demy, winner of the Cannes festival for "Les Parapluis de Cherbourg" directs the two sisters, Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac as the twin sisters living at the village of Rochefort, waiting for their perfect love to arrive. Gene Kelly, Michel Piccoli and Danielle Darrieux complete the cast of one of the most beautiful films I ever saw.

As light and airy as a soufflé, but just not for me. Demy's use of color is impressive, especially the little accents in the background of his scenes, e.g. window shutters, people in the distance, etc. The film has a graceful harmony about it and if you're looking for breezy escapism this may be your film, but personally I thought it was too sweet over too long a run time. The story is weak and I never got invested in the characters or felt moved by the musical numbers, of which there are many. The result was a much shallower experience for me emotionally than Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and a feeling of wanting it to end in the second half. I loved seeing Gene Kelly (age 55), Danielle Darrieux (50), and the brief cameo from Agnès Varda (of the five nuns who visit the music shop, the 4th nun from the left). I didn't love seeing all the product placement.

When the movie was released in France,it was looked upon by most of the critics as a failure.Since it has been restored to favor and enjoys a high rating on the IMDb.

Hindsight reveals that Demy's work thoroughly deserved its restoring to favor.It's all the more precious as it was to be the only movie where the Dorleac sisters (Catherine and Françoise) would appear together,after the latter's tragic death.

A whole town is singing and dancing ,a whole town which painter Demy colors in pastel blue ,green ,yellow,pink just as he did in Cherbourg,three years before.But,unlike "the parapluies",the lines are not sung,it's actually closer to American musicals ,which Gene Kelly's and George Chakiris's presence reinforces.The French cast is also very exciting:Danielle Darrieux is marvelously cast as the mother (she would often be Deneuve 's mother,check "8 femmes"!)and there's also a Demy's favorite ,Jacques Perrin (who would be Prince Charming in "Peau d'âne)and Michel Piccoli.

Michel Legrand,without whom a Demy movie would not exist, gave one of his best tunes "the twin sisters song" .

As I said at the beginning of my comment,the movie met mixed critical reception when it was released and not-so-great commercial success.Demy exiled himself to America where he made the uneven "Model shop" ;but "Peau d'Ane" (1970) reasserted his talent in his native country.

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.

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(!)

If you like musicals and if you find the 60's enchanting than do not look further than this classic French number.

The costumes are fantastically colourful full of pastels the style unmistakable, Hats are worn by both men and women... a different era, the characters even the meanies are charming it all sounds a bit whimsical but trust me it has humour as well as romance by the bag full.

Solange and Delphine transport us in a universe where Love is all around and beats to the sounds of cool Legrand beats,the Master Jazz composer of this musical. Actors such as Michel Piccoli only ever seen singing and acting simultaneously in this film, adds a bit more depth to this cinematic sensation. Not that it's lightness should be taken for fluffiness, if you scratch the script a little you will notice hints of modernity, it is a musical that goes where not even Grease goes in terms of language and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort was made nearly 20 years earlier...The film has pinches of realism in this simple tell of 2 twin sisters looking for love in the city of Rochefort in 60's France of that you can be certain.

I recommend this movie for 2 reasons. First the music, intoxicating Jazz numbers, American influenced yet continental texts, modern fluid dancing and singing...and the second reason is the story although simple it is punctuated by the arrival of meanies such as "les forins" or "Guillaume", even old man "DutrouZ" with a Z, hides something... for 90 minutes the viewer is projected into a family business a family a modern one so a little disjointed and controversial...and all this in the language of Moliere...rent it...buy it...whatever you do try and catch the Demoiselles de Rochefort you will smile all the more for it !

I just saw this for the first time (thanks, Filmstruck!) and can't get it out of my head. I want to crawl inside this film and live there forever.

Jacques Demy's fourth picture, a pendant musical to his previous sing-song delicacy THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (1964), real-life siblings Deneuve and Dorléac (who would ill-fatedly perish in a car accident in the mid-1967), play two non-identical twin sisters Solange (Dorléac) and Delphine (Deneuve), lap up their last weekend in their seaside hometown Rochefort , where a fair is scheduled, before take off to pursue their dreams in Paris.

The opening musical number invitingly takes place on a ferry bridge, a novelty to the eyes of this reviewer, and introduces us two dashing carnies Étienne (Chakiris) and Bill (Dale), arriving for the weekend fair, who soon will be both jilted by their sailor-smitten dancing partners and seek succor to the twins. The hub where the movie's main characters hanging around is the glass-built café in the main town square, owned by the Yvonne (Darrieux, the legendary French cinema icon is the only one in the cast whose singing voice is not dubbed), the mother of Solange and Delphine, she meets a demobbed navy sailor Maxence (Perrin), who is a self-acknowledged poet-cum-painter, sentimentally looking for the ideal female, which unbeknownst to both, is actually Delphine, an uncanny undertow of how Maxence could draw a portrait of Delphine even without knowing her never really takes off, not to mention one of Yvonne's clientele is a grisly murderer, yes, in Demy's caprice, homicide and dismemberment are all trivial fodder for laughter.

The twins have their own hang-ups to sort out, Delphine is leaving her pontifical boyfriend, the gallery owner Guillaume (Riberolles), and is dangled to find out who is the painter of the portrait (not that she really puts any effort to it); Solange, a composer and pianist, chances upon a foreigner Andy Miller (Kelly, supple enough to meet the dancing requirements, but overtly too old for the role) in town, mutually swooned over each other, yet they are so swamped in this leisure town, that no time to even exchange their names since Andy is actually the American musician Solange is arranged to meet through Simon Dame (Piccoli), a lovelorn singleton pining for his former fiancé, who broke off their relationship a decade ago simply because his ridiculous name, who wants to be called Madame Dame? And guess who is the petulant quasi-Madame Dame? I will not spill the beans but it is really a freaking small world!

The plot is quite convoluted on paper, but Demy plays it out puckishly and desultorily, punctuates it with dynamically choreographed set pieces and lip-syncing affectation, although the monotony of the saccharine ditties (sorry maestro Michael Legrand!) starts to pall literally after the duet A PAIR OF TWINS, a similar fate in CHERBOURG, but what makes ROCHFORT a shade more inferior is its innate deficiency of empathy and intrigue, even it is an unadulterated feel-gooder, Demy's coup- de-théâre is way too self-conscious and inundated with smooth-talking levity, all his characters are energetic and emotive outwardly, but cardboard and unstimulating through and through.

Rochefort is decked out with a variegated Murano-esque enchantment, and all roles are bestowed with an impeccable and eye-catching dress sense, "charming" is high-lighted on its DVD cover, indeed, that's the apposite word for this chic confectionery, a praiseworthy endeavor notwithstanding, it is also too cheesy for a dispassionate stomach.

this is hands down one of the best movies that i have ever seen. i love french musicals (if you like this, you'll also like "peau d'ane" and "8 femmes") and i burst into tears when gene kelly appeared, i was so excited. francoise dorleac gives an adorable performance, as does catherine deneuve. the musical numbers are fantastic, the costumes are colourful, beautiful and well coordinated, and the choreography is stunning. everything down to the cameos is exquisitely placed. definitely uplifting, well-cast, and lovely. the only qualm i had with this movie is that i wanted more... i would love to see what happened to the characters where the story left off. they were so lovable that one cannot help feeling attached to them.

this film is like a dream come true. it´s absolutely fantastic. jacques demy is a great director, the film has great lines, great actors, great dances, great songs, thanks to michel legrand.

unmissable.

We loved this movie so much we went to visit the town of Rochefort. Stars from French and American cinema do wonderful work in the movie - Catherine Deneuve, Francoise Dorleac, Gene Kelly, George Chakiris, Danielle Darrieux, and Michel Piccoli. The version now available from Netflix is beautiful and has fine sound, but we noticed one song had been deleted that was in the version we saw 10 or 15 years ago. As for Rochefort, it's a nice place to visit, on the coast halfway between Bordeaux and Nantes. The remarkable "transbordeur" bridge shown in the opening and closing scenes has been restored for operation as a tourist feature.

A merry and vivid movie like a champagne glass, putting together famous dance and movie stars (some at the beginning of their careers or not far from that) such as Catherine Deneuve, her sister the unfortunate Françoise Dorléac (who died in 1967 burnt alive in a car accident), the inimitable Gene Kelly, the dancer George Chakiris (West Side Story, do you remember?), Michel Piccoli and last but not least the veteran Danielle Darrieux always and still a pretty lady, in the role of mother of the two sisters (they appear as such also in the movie, one of them as a dance teacher and the other as a composer and piano teacher). This movie runs at a vivacious and lively rhythm following a sentimental plot of encounters, estrangements and re-encounters of lovers and friends, interspersed now and then with dances and songs of great quality in a cheerful atmosphere in the town of Rochefort. It's a musical the American way but differentiated by a subtle French touch here and there which is revealed for instance by the slight reference to the news on a newspaper of the sadistic murder of a woman or even when the two itinerant show businessmen who offer themselves to give a lift to Paris to both sisters,tell them that they would also like to go to bed with them though in a cheerful mood as some joke. This movie was well restored by Agnès Varda in 1992 (error excepted)and sets us in a good fettle after watching it.

The Young Girls of Rocheford (1967)

It's kind of amazing this kind of film was even ever made. It's both wonderful and horrible. The horrible aspects kept me from really watching every minute, but the wonderful aspects made me try.

This is a French musical that is almost all singing. The plot moves along, barely, and lacks the clarity of say a Fred Astaire musical (or any other American affair), and it doesn't have dance very often (or very well done). But boy does it go from one song to another.

The stylizing is terrific--every set is modern and clean, inside and out on the streets of 1960s Paris. If you are a fan of Catherine Deneuve, she's a bit inaccessible beneath the heavy wig and makeup and amidst all the singing. In fact, there is nothing sincere going on here, unless you can reach beneath the veneer of the music and its style

That's the trick here, adapting to this very very different way of telling a story. I don't think it's brilliant, but it has elements that will appeal to people already comfortable with the vocabulary, and the arch falseness of it all. Because, actually, deep down, and very shallowly hidden, is a heart-rending story of two young woman wanting true love. Of course, they are impossibly beautiful and the fact they are even marginally single is hilarious, but such is a movie, and a musical.

You might recognize a song or two here, but for the most part the musical aspects are vehicles for replacing normal dialog. What a cool idea...if only done with more verve and imagination. Even the filming, for all its clean perfection, is a bit dry, at least compared to the muscular films of American 1950s Leonard Freed vintage. Furthermore, the two sisters who are the leads are a bit stiff physically (not natural dancers, I guess) and the entire movie, including their parts, is dubbed in later recordings, and it sounds and looks a bit odd.

The 1960s were a rough time for feature movies everywhere, and this is struggling to create a paradigm that surpasses television and is rich and sparkling and perfect. The production values are high, for sure. But be prepared. It's a stiff, stilted narrative and the music is not overly memorable. Two large stakes driven into a somewhat stiff corpus. There's even a dance with a supposed basketball dance troupe. Oy.

You know what? I think if you've gotten this far, watch the first ten minutes. You'll either barf or fall asleep or be really curious. It's a fair sample of the remaining two hours. Good luck!