Catherine Deneuve brings an unworldly, subtly erotic charm to Jacques Demy’s rereleased pastel rainbow of a musical
Jacques Demy’s 1964 movie The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is now revived in cinemas as part of the Musicals seasons at London’s BFI Southbank, and it has to be one of the most famous non-Hollywood musicals of all time: entirely sung through, like a light opera of the semi-swinging French 60s.
Catherine Deneuve plays Geneviève, a beautiful 17-year-old (bafflingly, Demy’s lyrics describe her as not beautiful) demurely working for her mother (Anne Vernon) in a quaint umbrella shop in Cherbourg. She is dating handsome young auto mechanic Guy (Nino Castelnuovo) and they are very happy, but she is devastated when Guy is called up for military service in Algeria, and even more upset when he stops writing to her. Meanwhile, her mother has serious money worries and is steering poor, bewildered Geneviève into smiling on the wealthy young man, Roland (Marc Michel), who wants to marry her.