Love, loss and separation; a review of the movie 'The Umbrellas of Cherbourg' (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg).

I was introduced to Jacques Demy's 1963 movie 'The Umbrellas of Cherbourg' by a French friend who like so many of his compatriots is completely fascinated by the legend that is Catherine Deneuve. Before my first visit to 'Cherbourg' he'd already introduced me to Deneuve in Bunuel's 'Belle Du Jour' and Polanski's 'Repulsion'.  I'd seen her shed her middle class respectability, becoming a high-class Parisien prostitute with a penchant for kinky sex, and seen her losing her mind, descending into madness in a suffocating fly-blown London Kensington flat. Visiting Paris the same friend showed me the square near the Jardin De Luxembourg where Deneuve has an apartment, the cafe where she apparently sometimes had coffee.

The film's opening credits are inspired and set the tone for what is to follow.

I'd been primed for something special from Deneuve but I wasn't really sure what to expect from 'Les parapluies de Cherbourg"'. It is after all a musical, that much I already knew, sung entirely with no spoken dialogue, and famous for its use of colour. I'd heard the aching Michel Legrand love theme 'I will wait for you' countless times on TV and radio, but knew nothing of the filmic context in which the music was first used. This sense of 'not being sure' stayed with me as I viewed the film, and in many ways 'not being sure'- doubt is the key theme of this brilliant movie. Can we ever be sure? What is love? Do we follow the head or the heart? What bargains do we make with ourselves and others?  This is a film that will be of interest to anyone who has ever pondered the meaning of love and relationships.

Demy offers no easy answers and confounds us from the beginning, his aim seems to be to unsettle, and unnerve. It's a bittersweet offering.

The opening shots show an aerial atmospheric view of the Cherbourg harbour bathed in crepuscular yellow light, then the camera pans to the cobbled quayside. We see matelots walking the quayside, evoking thoughts of Querelle and Cocteau. So far so romantic. It rains, (though not realistic rain but deliberate cinematic fake rain) we see the tops of brightly coloured umbrellas, but this is no Busby Berkeley spectacular,  neither is it 'Singing In The Rain', there is no joyful exuberance, the music is sad and mournful, elegiac even.

This is a film that questions the boundaries between make-believe and reality.

Deneuve's character Genevieve, a shop assistant in an umbrella shop falls head-over-heels in love with Guy, a dark, handsome car mechanic played by Nino Castelnuovo. They are totally smitten, there's is a totally consuming young love. Their love scenes are saturated in Technicolour, romance has brought life and colour to their provincial small-town lives. In a famous scene we see the couple walking down a brightly coloured passageway, transported on a dolly out of camera shot, they are pulled along and appear to be gliding in space, a special effect that heightens the sense of their ungroundedness. They appear to be floating in a dream-like state, bouyed-up by romantic love.

Demy seems to be inviting the question-is this love or is this like my film making nothing but a beguiling illusion?  What do you the viewer want to believe? Do you want to be swept off your feet?  To what extent are you prepared to suspend disbelief?

The two pledge undying love for each other, but harsh realities intrude, they are to be parted. Guy has been drafted to the army, and so must leave Genevieve for the war in Algeria. Genevieve reacts strongly to the impending separation, it seems to touch into her deepest wounding and trigger existential terror. She says she will die if he leaves her.

The night before the separation we see Guy walking Genevieve up to his apartment. The screen is filled with a lurid green. On this fateful night she becomes pregnant by him.

In spite of the promises they make to each other, and their pledge to... wait for each other, they drift apart. Guy only writes occasionaly and eventually giving into pressure from her socially ambitious mother Genevieve marries Roland a suave older man, and jeweller, swapping Cherbourg for Paris.

On his return from the army Guy is angry and feels abandoned by Genevieve, scenes where the colours grey and brown predominate in stark contrast to the earlier candy coloured scenes. He appears to be going off the rails, seeks solace with a prostitute, before eventually deciding to settle down with Madeleine, a young woman who's been nursing his aling Aunt who later dies. Fast forward six years to 1963 and they have a child together, a boy named Francois and have opened a petrol station.

Guy's Petrol station, with lots of Esso product on display inside and out, before the days of product placement-apparently the film makers made no money at all from Esso. Note the name of the petrol station-'L'escale Cherbourgoise' a tongue-in-cheek play on words and reference to Guy's upward social mobility.

That's a bit of a rush through the plot but it takes me to the coda, the films powerfully affecting final scene. Even if you never see the entire film it's worth 'You-tubing' this bit because it's in this subtle understated, carefully choreographed scene which lasts just six minutes, (and is almost a movie in itself) that Demy plays his full hand and shows a depth of understanding for the human condition and interconnectedness that never fails to move me, no matter how many times I see it. It's a scene that merits repeated viewings.

It's Christmas we see Guy and Madeleine dressing the Christmas tree inside the petrol station, it's snowing, the snow has settled and transformed the garage setting making it look more beautiful than it is. Their son, dressed in native american Indian head-dress is playing, excitedly banging a toy drum.  Madeleine leaves with the child to go shopping. A black Mercedes pulls up in the forecourt.
The driver of the car sounds the horn, and the 'I will wait for you' starts up, building and breaking like a tidal wave, providing an emotional intensity matching anything experienced in a Puccini opera. It's Genevieve, a bourgeois now in appearance -dressed expensively wearing fur and pearls.

Inside the petrol station Genevieve tells Guy about the death of her mother (echoing Guys loss of his Aunt, adding emphasis to the film's message of impermanence) and tells him about their daughter Francoise 'She's a lot like you'. Her choice of name for her child is like his, Francois, suggesting the ways in which they are both like each other and still connected. The child is outside waiting in the car on her own Genevieve asks if he'd like to see her, he shakes his head, and draws on his cigarette.

Their poignant meeting is interrupted in tragicomic fashion by the petrol pump attendant who bursts in (mundane reality breaking through again), wanting to know what kind of petrol she'd prefer 'super' or-'ordinaire'. The music changes right on cue to jaunty inane incidental jazz. The scene plays ironically with the notion of choices in love and consumerism. 'It doesn't matter' she replies with weary resignation.  She asks if Guy's alright, 'Yes' he says, - 'I'm fine', and that's it...

Genevieve leaves, gets in the car and drives off into the cold snowy night. Madeleine and the child return from the shops. Guy runs to her, hugs her and sweeps her off her feet, then plays with the boy in the snow, picks him up and follows Madeleine indoors. The Michel Legrand theme swells to its emotional climax and the camera pans back, leaving the viewer alone outside the petrol station with the gently falling snow and mixed emotions-I notice I often have strong feelings of grief and a kind of elated sadness. It's not a conventional Hollywood ending, it's complex, it doesn't come neatly gift-wrapped we have to work through our thoughts and feelings.  How do relationships end? What compromises do we make in relationships?

The 'Umbrellas of Cherbourg' in many ways reiterates the Buddhist Remembrances (see my earlier post).  The conclusion is very dharmic-there is suffering (dukkha) in this life, nothing lasts, everything changes but there is also much wonder and beauty when we come alive to the moment-the falling snow, the presence of the people we love.
The film also deals with universal themes of love, choice, disappointment and regret. It invites us to consider the complicated choices we make in love relationships, what it means to commit to another and the losses that any choice inevitably involves as well as the gains.

'Umbrellas' can also be read as a social comment on the changing culture of France-the country's love affair with all things American, and the way an old France began to disappear in the sixties as the nation embraced consumerism and modernity. I'm reminded of the special place that France has always occupied in my heart, and this film reminds me of the peak of that love affair in the days before the tunnel, when you had to undertake a sea voyage to reach 'the continent', a time when France seemed so alluringly romantic and 'other'.

Demy's film suggests France like romantic love is not what we think it is or would like it to be.