Take Two

Review: "Love Songs"

French musicals are an acquired taste. I should know, because I thought I hated ‘em until I suddenly acquired it. The moment of revelation is cloudy, but may have been tethered to first hearing the Michel Legrand song score for 1968’s Young Girls of Rochefort—music so cheerful, insouciant, wistful and catchy it could charm the distemper from Guantanamo Bay. (It took several more years to actually see that film, which outside France was a big flop, only recently getting belated appreciation and restored-print DVD exposure.)

As defined by the original taste-making blueprint, Demy’s 1964 Umbrellas of Cherbourg (also with a Legrand score, one more famous but I think less intoxicating), the French musical is not at all like your classic Hollywood model—or even the Bollywood one. Songs simply seep into the "action," simply extending the inevitable discussion of relationships or their lack rather than providing plot with some flamboyant interruption. People don’t "burst" into song, they slip into it. The music is usually less Broadway than youthful pop, movement not half so formal as would require the term "choreography."

topics: french cinema, musicals, reviews