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• Region: Region 2 (Read more about DVD formats.)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• ASIN: 8388164449
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5.0 out of 5 stars Gloriously romantic yet surprisingly clear-eyed, July 13, 2009

By 

Trevor Willsmer (London, England) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Umbrellas Of Cherbourg - Special Edition 2 DVD Set [Non-US Format, Pal, Region 2, Import] (DVD)

A semi followup to Jacques Demy's Lola - both Michel Legrand's main theme and Marc Marcel's character return - The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is surprisingly upbeat despite its subject matter. A traditional lost love story set against the backdrop of the Algerian War that separates the lovers, it opts for a less than traditional realistic ending that shows how their lives change, not necessarily for the worse, after they are parted. It's last act is darker than people give it credit, dealing with the young hero's disillusion on his return, oddly enough made more affecting by the triteness of what precedes it. While shot in some of the most glorious colour imagery ever seen, the dialogue is little more than sung banalities, whether it's a declaration of undying love or an extra asking where the paint shop is, which somehow grounds it. Even the location of the finale, an Esso filling station, is ultimately mundane, yet somehow becomes a gloriously romantic location for a wistfully bitter parting.

Documentary The World of Jacques Demy aka L'Univers de Jacques Demy, Agnes Varda's second film about her husband (after her semi-fictionalised film about his childhood, Jacquot de Nantes), available separately in the States but handily included on the 2-disc UK PAL version of Cherbourg, eschews a chronological approach for a more scrapbook like amble through his career, which is one way of avoiding the inevitable decline of his career and ending on a high. Utilizing archive interviews, on-set footage, reuniting co-stars and hearing from fans (mostly teenage girls), surprises abound, such as footage of Demy and Harrison Ford hanging around while shooting tests for his forgotten US sequel to Lola, Model Shop (Ford was replaced by Gary Lockwood at the studio's insistence Ford would never be a box-office star) or a chubby Jim Morrison visiting the set of Peau D'Ane. While it offers ample inadvertent examples of why much of his post-60s work was less than successful - many of the more obscure films look simply awful - it does make you want to see the odd lesser-known work like the surprisingly dark looking The Pied Piper, and the 90 minutes pass surprisingly easily.