Perfectly adorable

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

In the little town Rochefort lives Delphine and Solange Garnier, two musical twins that teach music and dance to kids. One day, Etienne and Bill arrive in town, and need the twins help with a song and dance-number. Also, the famous piano-player Andy Miller (Gene Kelly) comes to town to help an old friend.Jacques Demy is an incredible filmmaker and the master of the musical. Working with Catherine Deneuve (his muse?), he succeeds again and even gets Gene Kelly in on the act. This film not only has solid singing, but plenty of noteworthy choreography. And, as Demy seems quite fond of, more than a splash of color.Jonathan Rosenbaum says the film "is loved in France but tends to be an acquired taste elsewhere." Supporting this view he cites Pauline Kael, who wrote that this film "demonstrates how even a gifted Frenchman who adores American musicals misunderstands their conventions." While this is probably not Demy's best film, trying to force it into the Hollywood box may be a mistake on Kael's part.Definitely worth seeking out, especially now that Criterion has released it on Blu-ray as part of their incredible Demy box set.

Suspending belief and just settling back to enjoy and laugh at the high camp of this unusual musical film is a pre-requisite.Suspending, indeed, is the way the film starts and ends, with the travelling players and their vehicles travelling on the Rochefort-Martrou Transporter Bridge built 1898-1900; only about twenty of these unusual bridges were built worldwide, and half survive with some still in use. This bridge was refurbished in 1994 and is in use in the summer months. Suspending might, too, have been the end for the axe-murderer, but we are not told.The French Navy school, the home for the many sailors seen in the film, was Le Centre Ecole de l'Aéronautique Navale (CEAN). No more sailors like Maxence, and no more sailors' hats with their red pompons though, as the French Navy pulled out of Rochefort by 2002 after a presence that had lasted 336 years. The ribbon on the sailors' hats reads EN ROCHEFORT - Ecole Navale Rochefort.The primary colours of the film are a defining aspect and the sunshine helps enormously; who would not want to visit Rochefort for a holiday? The Mayor will be very happy with the film's being shown again to a new generation at London's British Film Institute.With dancing sailors and young, lithe dancers, the different groups wearing matching clothes, the film is very high camp and will have some appeal to a gay audience for sure!The whole is colourful froth and pretty harmless fun.

We loved this movie so much we went to visit the town of Rochefort. Stars from French and American cinema do wonderful work in the movie - Catherine Deneuve, Francoise Dorleac, Gene Kelly, George Chakiris, Danielle Darrieux, and Michel Piccoli. The version now available from Netflix is beautiful and has fine sound, but we noticed one song had been deleted that was in the version we saw 10 or 15 years ago. As for Rochefort, it's a nice place to visit, on the coast halfway between Bordeaux and Nantes. The remarkable "transbordeur" bridge shown in the opening and closing scenes has been restored for operation as a tourist feature.

This French musical inspired, I'm sure, by the American M-G-M musicals (with Gene Kelly's presence being possible evidence of that) takes a while but once you get into the dances and mostly dubbed singing (Danielle Darrieux excepted) the rest of the story and picture takes you to a realm that seems out of this world. The lead twin sisters Solange and Delphine, played by real-life sibs Francoise Dorleac and Catherine Deneuve, provide much of the appeal for me as they appear in various glamorous costumes-and in one scene wigs-for their very appealing numbers with music provided by Michel Legrand (who actually gets referenced in a number!). Ms. Darrieux is also very appealing as their mother, Yvonne. Nice to see West Side Story performer George Chakiris dancing as one of the two male leads and finally see Kelly actually doing his steps in actual French streets as opposed to the studio backlots in An American in Paris (though it's a shame that part of his dialogue is dubbed since it's so obvious when that happens). His charm as a dancer is still evident even when doing simple steps and his pairing with Ms. Dorleac brings some romantic sizzle to the proceedings. And the many coincidences and missed opportunities that abound bring such delicious irony to the possible inevitable happy endings that make dreamers be glad to dream what they dream. In summary, The Young Girls of Rochefort is an American musical-inspired French delight! P.S. I realized I had to change screen sizes in the middle of this movie when I found some of the subtitles were obviously not on screen. So I watched the beginning all over again to get the full treatment and I'm so glad I did!