Jacques Demy’s ’80s magnum opus continues in the genre of sung-through musical familiar from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964). Tear gas fired to quell the violent strikes plaguing Nantes in 1955 seeps into the home of the sympathetic Madame Langlois (Danielle Darrieux). Her lodger, François (Richard Berry), a politically active dock worker at the forefront of the demonstrations, manages to impregnate his girlfriend Violette (Fabienne Guyon), who is oblivious to the cruelty of the world, but falls in love with another woman, Edith, who roams the streets wearing nothing but an expensive fur coat (Dominique Sanda, who worked with the director on the 1980 Colette adaptation Break of Day). The new object of his heart happens to be the daughter of François’ landlady, who is married to an impotent, brutal, razor-wielding television salesman (the faun-like and diabolical Michel Piccoli).
The adult fairy tale that reaches for ultimate tragedy shines in glorious, soul-stirring colours. The revolutionary ideals of class struggle are combined with themes of friendship and solidarity, but in the end it is the larger-than-life love, the burning passion that parallels the fates of Tristan and Isolde, that pushes back the boundaries of eternity.
Lauri Timonen