Originally published April 2, 2020
Since the entire country is in quarantine, I have little better to do than start writing reviews again.
Jacques Demy’s 1964 musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is not a film most viewers will be on board with from the start. It’s sung-through and often mimics casual conversation rather than traditional song structure. The film begins with Guy (Nino Castelnuovo) leaving work and convincing someone else to stay late. It’s easy to question if the story needed to be told this way. When Catherine Deneuve’s Geneviève sings “Je t’aime, je t’aime,” the viewer realizes no other manner does the story justice.
The film is a musical with few peers. Its gamble with the musical format is well paid-off by the performances of Nino Castelnuovo and Catherine Deneuve as well as Michel Legrand’s music. Castelnuovo and Deneuve strike a particular and rare balance that elevates their performances above most others: the pair slip effortlessly into their characters, yet at the same time are immediately recognizable as themselves.
The film’s story is relatively simple, even quaint: boy meets girl, boy goes off to war, girl marries someone else, both achieve their dreams without the other. Umbrellas doesn’t even give viewers a meet-cute. Guy and Geneviève are firmly in love when the film opens. Still, the story structure works. Castelnuovo and Deneuve’s performances are so strong that their relationship is one viewers can root for from the moment the pair lock eyes.
Umbrellas is, perhaps, not a film one should partake for the first time during a national quarantine. As in many of his other works, Demy balances joy and melancholy with a master’s touch, setting this tragic tale against one of the brightest and finest set designs ever.
Colors pop off the screen in a way that filmmakers such as Wes Anderson and Damien Chazelle consistently emulate. The set design is deliberate and color-coded to look almost like a dream; as Guy and Geneviève’s dreams take their own paths in the film, Demy smartly introduces neon into the color palette. The neon never overtakes the pastel colors of the first two-thirds, instead working with it to symbolize how our dreams change form, but never their basic shape.
There’s no better time than the present to enjoy this classic.
Final score: 9.7/10