The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Watching Jacques Demy’s most famous work is like viewing a secret history of cinema, where all the words are sung and all the sights are candy-coated, where the French New Wave and the MGM musical dwell hand in hand in an Eastmancolor paradise of Pop Art and popsicle colors. The plot? A boy and girl love, lose, love again, and lose again against an assortment of fabulous wallpaper. In the role that made her a star, twenty-year-old Catherine Deneuve seems more hologram of beauty than earthly being, floating through a lilac-and-strawberry-painted world where love is all around and characters’ clothes match their apartment walls.