190. The Young Girls of Rochefort

Song - Dansen Aan Zee (Blof)

Movie: The Young Girls of Rochefort - Les demoiselles de Rochefort (Jacques Demy, 1967)

Not only is this a hugely enjoyable movie, it also made me appreciate La La Land more. When it came out, many critics, even those who liked it, pointed out that it is a bit derivative of The Young Girls of Rochefort and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. As Chazelle had freely cribbed (not that there is anything wrong with that!) from 8 1/2 and Rebel Without A Cause, it seemed to me not entirely unfair to view him as a good young director who should try to develop more ideas of his own. The opening scene of The Young Girls of Rochefort will not dissuade you of that notion, but as the film progresses it becomes more obvious that, while it may be the fundament behind La La Land, Chazelle doesn't just mindlessly take elements from it. It's a springing board for his own style, concerns and ideas, and there are elements of La La Land that I prefer over The Young Girls of Rochefort. 

What definitely did not help Chazelle is that he tried to emulate Demy's use of color in this film. That is just absolutely spectacular and inimitable. He seems to intuitively know how to combine color schemes to make each and every shot in his film as expressive and as appealing as possible. Every individual color in any given shot in the film manages to pop out without taking the focus away from anything else that is going on within the frame. As a consequence, the film basically makes its own reality, creating an obviously aestheticized vision of Rochefort that still makes it look as if the city's colors are authentic to it, and that its colorful depiction is simply a natural consequence of the film being shot there. At certain moments, during the first Gene Kelly dance, for example, Demy achieves even more astonishing things by giving the impression, if you didn't know any better, that he is combining live action with animation. 

I also very much like the screenplay of the film, which in the first half takes its time to introduce the characters and their connections, and always lets the audience be one step ahead of the people we see. This allows it to become a wonderfully elongated romantic farce in the second half, full of missed connections and mistaken identities. This is further emphasised by the film's framing. There is barely any shot in the city in which we don't see someone walking around in the background, unknown to the main characters at the center of the scene. They might be children playing on the street, mothers with strollers, construction workers or bar patrons, but life in the city is always going on, somewhere in the background of the main actions. And sometimes some of these background figures will suddenly become part of the main scenery and join in the choreography. Which also brings us to what I like a bit less about the film. 

Much of the choregoraphy is brillantly staged, most of the songs are appealing and most of the actors, in particular Gene Kelly, are great. But there is little variety in the songs, dances and choreographies. Many of them follow the same patterns and take place in the same 4/5 locations in the city. I do find La La Land preferable in this regard. There is much more distinction between the staging of, for example, its opening number, City of Stars, and the Planetarium sequence than there is between any two musical numbers in this film. There is also much more variety in the music we hear. Finally, while I am always in favor of more artificiality/theatricality in films, the more naturalistic acting of Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling makes their love more tangible than any of the romances in this film. It's hard to convey the particularly joyful whimsy of falling in love if joyful whimsy is your standard operating procedure. There is nothing as swoonilly romantic here as La La Land's flight of fancy in the aforementioned Planetarium sequence. Conversely though, there is also nothing as obnoxious as La La Land's final 15 minutes which play as an apologia for ruthless careerism. Whatever one might think of The Young Girls of Rochefort, it is never ashamed to be seen as a film whose main aim is to provide joy for joy's sake.