 The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) Umbrellas is really a film about contradictions. All of the dialogue in the film – all of it – is sung, making it a surprisingly soft-spoken musical. Yet despite the singing, there's very few identifiable songs (the melodies just seem to flow into each other, without regard for traditional songwriting in musicals), and no dance numbers at all. Just joy and pain, sunshine and rain … sung. It's shot in a sweeping, whirling, giddy style that makes everything look simply divine. But it's set in a grimy working-class French port town, and its leads are struggling for existence against a rising tide of economic despair and rumors of impending war. The leads in question, Guy (Nino Castelnuovo) and Genevieve (Catherine Deneuve) are impossibly young and beautiful, and rapturously in love, but Guy is just a mechanic with simple dreams, and Genevieve, for all her talk-singing of leading a simple life, secretly longs for financial security and luxury. More contradictions. Genevieve's widowed mother is the chief obstacle to their desperate love – an older woman trying to make the best of diminishing returns on her fading looks – and though she is exceptionally crass, she actually makes a lot of sense in a calculating, "What's really best for my daughter" way. Then there's Roland Cassard, Genevieve's seemingly callous and overbearing – but wealthy – suitor, who at first seems pathetic and absurd, but soon reveals great depths of genuine feeling born of his own loss. And his thematic counterpart, Madeleine, who secretly loves Guy while tending his ailing aunt. There isn't a desire among these conflicting characters we don't want fulfilled, a longing we don't want satisfied. And yet, we still ultimately want Guy and Genevieve to work it out, despite increasingly huge obstacles. They're just so fucking beautiful, they have to be together. It helps that the acting's so good, especially the angelic Deneuve, who positively glows with innocent sensuality. We need little exposition to understand why Guy and Cassard are so smitten. How the film resolves these conflicts is revelatory – an honest, realistic and yet deeply romantic vision, at once satisfying, tragic, and wonderful. You feel by the end that you've had your innocent little heart torn out and replaced with a deeper, more mature heart – shaken, but not broken beyond repair. This is not a film that's easily understood or appreciated at the age of 20, when you're still obsessed with the notion of marrying your first-grade teacher, or the pretty girl in Economics I who doesn't even know you exist but would really love you if only she gave you the chance. This is a film for those who've had some loss in the romance department, have known despair and hopelessness, and come back from the metaphorical Pit of Carkoon to experience love and joy that's all the sweeter thanks to their experience.
Review by Crimedog |
