Les Demoiselles de Rochefort - Film Review

Catherine Deneuve and Francoise Dorleac Star in Jacques Demy's Film

Sep 21, 2009

Real-life sisters Catherine Deneuve and Francoise Dorleac star alongside Hollywood legend Gene Kelly in Jacques Demy's Les Demoiselles de Rochefort.

Director Jacques Demy and composer Michel Legrand reunite after working together on the wonderful The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964). This time around they’ve relocated to Rochefort, a town by the sea and added Hollywood style dance routines. Gene Kelly even turns up to join in the fun.

A travelling show arrives in Rochefort. Bill (Grover Dale) and Etienne (West Side Story’s George Chakiris) are advertising products by dancing and singing a lot. They need replacements for two girls who’ve bailed on them after falling for a couple of sailors from the nearby naval base. Catherine Deneuve and her real-life sister Françoise Dorleac play twins Delphine and Solange who teach ballet and also like to dance and sing a lot.

Also arriving in town is American composer Andy Miller (Gene Kelly) who likes to sing and dance a lot and falls for Solange. Painter Maxence (Jacques Perrin) is less keen on dancing, preferring to mope about in his gallery with a painting of his ideal woman, who happens to look exactly like Delphine.

Jacques Demy Pays Homage to the Hollywood Musical

The presence of American stars Gene Kelly and George Chakiris indicates Demy’s love for the Hollywood musical. As with Cherbourg in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Demy paints Rochefort to look as bright and gaudy as a Vincent Minelli movie. There are ambitiously staged dance sequences (lots of them) recalling the work of choreographer Busby Berkely.

Catherine Deneuve and her sister Franciose Dorleac are beguiling as the twins. If like Jacques Perrin you were going to paint a vision of the perfect woman it would probably look like either of these beauties. Despite all the onscreen joy and dancing, lots of dancing, there is an air of melancholy to Les Demoiselles de Rochfort in seeing these two beautiful sisters appearing onscreen together for the last time. Dorleac died in a car crash in 1967, having just appeared alongside Michael Caine in Ken Russell’s dream-like spy movie Billion Dollar Brain.

Those with an abiding love for the Hollywood musical and for Gene Kelly in particular, still svelte and moving well at the age of 54, should enjoy this. Les Demoiselles de Rochefort is cinematic candy and requires a considerable sweet tooth. The cynical should be warned, it is a little like watching a feature-length version of The Flight of the Conchords musical number ‘Foux De Fa Fa.’

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