Good concept, poorly executed.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

From the same team that brought us The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Demy as director and LeGrand composing the score, is the equally delightful Young Girls of Rochefort. The costumes, sets, music and dance numbers are wonderful and joyful. The cast is solid enough, although the appearance of Gene Kelly did kind of throw me a bit, I guess for his considerable contributions to movie musicals was he included, although he was fine also. I didn't quite connect with Rochefort to the degree I did with Cherbourg, but still very much worth checking out.

Two beautiful girls and their lovely mother find singing, dancing, and love in the seaside town of Rochefort. Delphine falls for Maxence (the least convincing looking sailor since Popeye), Solange falls for Andy (Gene Kelly, who is more than twice the age of his paramour) and mother Yvonne finally yields to the man she jilted years ago (because he had a silly name). This romantic confection is delivered wrapped in exquisite colours, spontaneous dancing, and pretty, if not memorable, music. The film has some odd touches: for some reason, a gruesome murder is rolled into the plot, allowing for a little black humour and for a while all of the conversation seems to be in rhyming couplets (or at least the subtitles were). Most of the lead's singing voices were dubbed in (sometimes not particularly well) but I was quite impressed by the rhyming song subtitles (clever, albeit not always accurate, translations). Overall, a fun, colourful and very French musical (although not nearly as French as Remy's great 1964 musical "Les Parapluies de Cherbourg"). A sad footnote: Françoise Dorléac, Catherine Deneuve's actual sister who played her twin sister in this film, was killed in a car accident shortly after this film was released in Europe.

"Les Demoiselles de Rochefort" may be Jacques Demy's most frivolous film but it's also a masterpiece; a musical that owes almost everything to Minnelli, not to mention Donen and Kelly as well as Demy himself with touches of both "Lola" and "Les Parapluies de Cherbourg" very much to the fore. It also has one of the great scores, (by Michel Legrand), of any musical with lyrics by Demy himself and a cast headed by real-life sisters Catherine Deneuve and Francoise Dorleac, American musical stars George Chakiris, Grover Dale and Gene Kelly himself, as well as Danielle Darrieux, Michel Piccoli and Jacques Perrin. The plot is lighter than a soufflé and Ghislain Cloquet's cinematography, positively ravishing. It isn't as well known as "Les Parapluies de Cherbourg" but it's certainly it's equal. I think it's one of the greatest musicals ever made.

The Young Girls of Rocheford (1967)It's kind of amazing this kind of film was even ever made. It's both wonderful and horrible. The horrible aspects kept me from really watching every minute, but the wonderful aspects made me try. This is a French musical that is almost all singing. The plot moves along, barely, and lacks the clarity of say a Fred Astaire musical (or any other American affair), and it doesn't have dance very often (or very well done). But boy does it go from one song to another.The stylizing is terrific--every set is modern and clean, inside and out on the streets of 1960s Paris. If you are a fan of Catherine Deneuve, she's a bit inaccessible beneath the heavy wig and makeup and amidst all the singing. In fact, there is nothing sincere going on here, unless you can reach beneath the veneer of the music and its styleThat's the trick here, adapting to this very very different way of telling a story. I don't think it's brilliant, but it has elements that will appeal to people already comfortable with the vocabulary, and the arch falseness of it all. Because, actually, deep down, and very shallowly hidden, is a heart-rending story of two young woman wanting true love. Of course, they are impossibly beautiful and the fact they are even marginally single is hilarious, but such is a movie, and a musical.You might recognize a song or two here, but for the most part the musical aspects are vehicles for replacing normal dialog. What a cool idea...if only done with more verve and imagination. Even the filming, for all its clean perfection, is a bit dry, at least compared to the muscular films of American 1950s Leonard Freed vintage. Furthermore, the two sisters who are the leads are a bit stiff physically (not natural dancers, I guess) and the entire movie, including their parts, is dubbed in later recordings, and it sounds and looks a bit odd. The 1960s were a rough time for feature movies everywhere, and this is struggling to create a paradigm that surpasses television and is rich and sparkling and perfect. The production values are high, for sure. But be prepared. It's a stiff, stilted narrative and the music is not overly memorable. Two large stakes driven into a somewhat stiff corpus. There's even a dance with a supposed basketball dance troupe. Oy.You know what? I think if you've gotten this far, watch the first ten minutes. You'll either barf or fall asleep or be really curious. It's a fair sample of the remaining two hours. Good luck!