{"id":15015,"date":"2020-09-30T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-30T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=15015"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:17:46","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:17:46","slug":"the-young-girls-of-rochefort-in-the-social-isolation-era","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/the-young-girls-of-rochefort-in-the-social-isolation-era\/","title":{"rendered":"The Young Girls of Rochefort<\/i> in the Social Isolation Era"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When you walk through the city streets of Jacques Demy\u2019s imagination, it isn\u2019t speeding cars and businessmen with noses buried in newspapers that one must watch out for. It\u2019s smile-plastered strangers somersaulting on sidewalks, twisting off brick walls, hopping off windowsills. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s what we see in a sequence midway through Demy\u2019s 1967 blast of Technicolor comfort, The Young Girls of Rochefort. <\/em>Catherine Deneuve\u2019s Delphine doesn\u2019t just stroll on through it all; she surrenders to the freewheeling euphoria, intermittently entering and exiting flashes of dance with neighbors she may or may not know, giving in for moments at a time to the limitless possibility that forms the foundations of Demy\u2019s vision of the French harbor city.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even with all its carefully choreographed exuberance, the scene is rather casual compared to what precedes and follows, points in the story where song hastens along narrative development. Yet the images of Delphine\u2019s simple walk across town are otherworldly in their optimism, and define how the embrace of life\u2019s spontaneity is made thrilling, seamless, and communal in The Young Girls<\/em>. Even the costuming emphasizes the delights of the collective; individual outfits pop with a single color, but they form a living rainbow when those wearing them are moving in sync with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paradoxically, that embrace of togetherness makes the scene, and the entire film, a particularly sobering one to watch in 2020, as we\u2019ve turned to technology to replicate social experiences while a virus rages outside. Demy\u2019s fourth movie  \u2013 after Lola <\/em>(1961), The Bay of Angels<\/em> (1963), and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg <\/em>(1964)  \u2013 is a joyful musical in which casual interaction drives a sneakily labyrinthian story, a drama where lovers are united and reunited, and where every chance encounter bursts with possibility. Nearly every primary player crosses paths at some point, heightening the deadline-driven drama; The Young Girls of Rochefort <\/em>might be easy to dismiss for its convenience of plot if Demy wasn\u2019t so clearly romanticizing it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, it\u2019s a fairy tale, one of the impossible not only made possible, but very much probable. But now, when chance encounter and communal experience is<\/em> temporarily impossible, The Young Girls of Rochefort <\/em>hews closer to pure fantasy. Its sense of shameless unguardedness plays like a cinematic ecstasy, at a moment in time when unguarded is something we can\u2019t afford to be. And so Demy\u2019s images are something to aspire to. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Movies have a cheeky way of showing what we\u2019re missing out on. The medium is a mirror as much an escapist life raft, after all. And while the bureaucratic ineptitude and omnipresent possibility of cataclysm of the COVID-19 era have recontextualized many of the movies we thought we were so intimately familiar with, it wasn\u2019t until a revisit of The Young Girls of Rochefort<\/em> that I found myself confronting my internalized response to a pandemic. All the doing-nothing, going-nowhere, and seeing-no-one that has affected all our lives suddenly felt more acute. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Demy\u2019s film <\/em>endures because of the catharsis that balances out the early stages of his filmography, after the melancholy of Cherbourg<\/em> and the prickliness of Bay of Angels<\/em>. But it\u2019s easy to forget that the film is just as much \u2013 and perhaps more \u2013 about things desired as things found. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider our introduction to the titular young girls. Launching themselves into that euphoric autobiographical number, we begin to understand what they\u2019d rather be doing than leading classes for young(er) boys and girls. \u201cTeaching piano is making me turn pale, I\u2019ve had it up to here with the sound of bad scales,\u201d sings Solange (Fran\u00e7oise Dorl\u00e9ac). \u201cI\u2019m bored of these provincial ways, it\u2019s Paris for me where art really pays.\u201d Delphine, meanwhile, dreams of being in Paris\u2019s Opera Ballet. They\u2019re both, as they lyricize, \u201cready to rhapsodize\u201d (preferably, somewhere other than Rochefort, where they\u2019ve been all their lives). The sight of the just-arrived carnies in the town square sparks their lust for freedom. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Demy makes clear that those desires are worth attaining. Another early number finds two carnies, George Chakiris\u2019s Etienne and Grover Dale\u2019s Bill, singing of freedom\u2019s delights in the cafe. \u201cWe go from town to town, the future\u2019s an unknown; a pretty girl lends a hand, and life is grand,\u201d they croon, unaware that they\u2019ll soon have to look for fill-in performers when two of their crew (and their romantic flings) head off with some sailors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But that\u2019s to come later; for now, their words about living every moment seemingly without consequence is the kind of stuff we\u2019re aching for during the pandemic. \u201cOur life\u2019s a romance, a melody composed by chance\u201d is a sentiment that stands in stark relief in a time when we<\/em> can\u2019t take any chances. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, there\u2019s a reason one of the film\u2019s most melancholy tunes is the sailor Maxance\u2019s (Jacques Perrin) lament of desire, especially when contrasted against the duets of the young girls and carnie boys. A man who, like Delphine and Solange, is more preoccupied with what life could be than what it currently is, Maxence sings of searching for his \u201cfeminine ideal,\u201d the true love he can envision in his art but hasn\u2019t yet spotted on the street. He also turns the cafe into a stage, giving voice to his longing of a \u201cBotticelli beauty with such eyes, such poise,\u201d of a girl whose \u201chair pours down her brow like torrents of pure gold.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe is my only love, but what good is a dream?\u201d he goes on. \u201cI\u2019ve searched all over, but she\u2019s nowhere to be seen.\u201d Perrin\u2019s entrenched loneliness makes the performance, and the slightest hint of a smile proves Maxence is invested in his search. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every character is searching for something. We live in a time of searching and escape as well, though it\u2019s out of a need for normalization. The difference is, unlike the denizens in Rochefort<\/em>, we\u2019re prevented from acting on it by an invisible force. Liberation is something we can only look for in a world safe enough to compel our exploration of it, which makes the casual run-ins of Demy\u2019s movie even more entrancing, especially as the encounters bloom into desires realized. These days, we\u2019re more invested in staying away <\/em>from those we don\u2019t know than mingling with them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if we were worried that Demy wouldn\u2019t provide us with an antithesis to that active exploration he so adores, he provides it in the form of Yvonne, who laments that she\u2019s \u201cconfined to the aquarium\u201d of her cafe. Now, more than ever, we know how she feels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The carnival scenes belie another level of disconnect, images of revelers made eerie because we now associate large gatherings with petri dishes for disease. Who\u2019s to say how long that will last? Demy\u2019s camera flies over various dance numbers, allowing us to soak in the excitement while unaware how strange the scene would be to behold a few decades later. If there\u2019s an antagonist in Rochefort<\/em>, it\u2019s geographical or emotional stasis. Characters triumph by breaking out of it, by running or dancing or stumbling into each other. Mutual needs and wants are met, new paths are opened. Was there ever a more romantic line uttered than \u201cTake me, I want to see Paris!\u201d as Josette proclaims in closing minutes? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If there\u2019s one thing to take away from the movie in 2020, it\u2019s that life can only be as exciting and as propulsive as those we run into, when we least expect to. At the very least, that gives us something to look forward to; a balm for the uncertainty, now made even more potent. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to rot here,\u201d Solange insists to Delphine early on. If we can help it, neither are we. \"\"\/ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The vibrant street scenes and joyful interactions of Jacques Demy\u2019s 1967 musical hit differently after all these months of isolation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":606,"featured_media":15020,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1399],"tags":[1422,162],"class_list":["post-15015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-looking-back","tag-looking-back","tag-movies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/606"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15015"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22710,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15015\/revisions\/22710"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}