The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967)
Directed by Jacques Demy
In the seaside town of Rochefort, twin sisters Delphine and Solange dream of love and artistic fulfillment beyond their quiet lives. As sailors, artists, musicians, and chance visitors pass through town during a weekend fair, a web of near-misses and romantic longing brings ideal partners tantalizingly close—without their realizing it.
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What critics compared The Young Girls of Rochefort to
In films like 1964's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and 1967's The Young Girls of Rochefort, he fused the fancifulness of old Hollywood song-and-dance productions with the soul-searing emotions brought on by broken hearts and dreams too big to bear fruit.
So, too, the lush, lushly colored The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort, by French movie musical man Jacques Demy.
With unmistakable shades of Jacques Demy's "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" and "The Young Girls of Rochefort" written into its DNA, "La La Land" imagines a reality where singing and dancing is as natural as breathing.
But Chazelle also is chasing the sweetly melancholic rapture of the French New Wave master Jacques Demy, whose Michel Legrand-scored ’60s classics, “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” and “The Young Girls of Rochefort,” set the rhythm for this movie’s dreamy mélange of the lyrical and the everyday.
Taking its cues from classic Hollywood tropes and candy-colored French musicals such as “The Young Girls of Rochefort,” “La La Land,” a simple boy-meets-girl story set in today’s Los Angeles, is a sumptuous treat, all richly hued midcentury dresses, dazzling lighting and whimsical set pieces.
Chazelle's heart, and color sense, really belongs to the Jacques Demy musicals "The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" and "The Young Girls of Rochefort," with their working-class daydreams of true love and narratives of missed opportunity.
The result is a film that has the same light yet bittersweet tone of Jacque Demy’s 60s French musical romances – The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and The Young Girls of Rochefort – but it feels very contemporary.