Amazon.com video review:
The French director Jacques Demy scored a worldwide hit in 1964 with
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, a bittersweet candy-colored romance in which
all the dialogue was set to music. Equally enchanting is the musical that
reunited Demy with the star and composer of Umbrellas, Catherine
Deneuve and Michel Legrand. The film is The Young Girls of
Rochefort, an effervescent concoction about traveling players and
dreamy-headed demoiselles in a seaside town. Deneuve and her
real-life sister, Françoise Dorléac (who died in a car accident not long
after the movie was made), play twins who fantasize about life in Paris. But
before they leave town, they are distracted by the weekend fair and its
colorful singers and dancers. They're also destined to meet an American
composer--gloriously, it's Gene Kelly, carrying the aura of classic MGM
musicals in his lighter-than-air wake. He was 55 at the time, but much
younger in movie years. (Another American, George Chakiris, also dances his
way through the film.) Legrand's music isn't as powerful as his
Cherbourg score, and some of the choreography would fit right into
an Austin Powers discotheque sequence. And the costumes--well, the
excesses of '60s mod designs have not aged well. Yet the crazy
hairstyles and vinyl boots fit right into the film's sense of gleeful fun.
There is a sunny, daffy spirit to this movie that becomes positively
infectious. It deserves to be better known. (Try to catch a letterboxed
version, if possible.) --Robert Horton
