Tacticalin An absolute waste of money

Mehdi Hoffman There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

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

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

SvSqSvS Caught between sounding colors and the grieving song of Geneviève's stricken face, receptive audiences are destined to crumble in love with this popular French tearjerker. Everything works: the directing, the camera, the set pieces, the dialogue, the songs, the story, the makeup, the costuming, the actors, and the actress. Beautiful! Memorable! Heartbreaking! Perfect for adding to a collection! This movie is the prime souvenir of Jacques Demy and contains Catherine Deneuve's most emotional performance. Audiences of all ages can enjoy, especially those who enjoy romance musicals. Take a comfortable seat with a hot cup of chocolate, and brace yourself for not only one of the best movies of the 1960s, but of all-time.

AdamMitchyCat When this movie began, I was madly in love with it. I loved the colors and the cinematography and the opening titles and everything about the first sequence. And then we meet the characters, and we are charmed by their voices and how adorable the movie is, and the entire film keeps you invested. I was really into it until the last 20 minutes when the charm sort of wore itself off after a while. And that is NOT saying that the ending is bad, it isn't; it's just that this film might be a little longer than it needs to be. But the beautiful colors and glamor of the actors make this movie enjoyable, and the music is very nice to listen to. It sort of is like a modern day (well, 1960s) opera. No words are spoken; they are just sung. And it works, and the characters are interesting and the scenario is interesting. It's just that as it god near the end, I was looking at my watch a little more and more. It is worth checking out, and it is adorable, and it is a piece of film history. It's a wonderful experience that I think I could enjoy once, but not again after that.

lasttimeisaw A three-act musical (or four if one counts the final reunion independently) with all dialogue sung by its characters, the second of its unique kind I've watched so far, the previous one is Tom Hooper's LES MISÉRABLES (2012, 6/10), THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG is director Jacques Demy's third feature, a controversial Palme d'Or winner, more for its groundbreaking technique than its own substance, nevertheless it instantly launched the starlet Catherine Deneuve into stardom and has initiated her extended and illustrious career not only limited in the French cinema.Denueve's glacial beauty is her calling card even in her earlier stage (the dismissive DONKEY SKIN 1970, 4/10, another Demy-Denueve collaboration, does her wrong to disguise her as a free-spirit and spontaneous princess), at the age of 20, she plays a young girl Geneviève living with her widow mother Madame Emery (Vernon), they are running a chic umbrella shop in Cherbourg in 1957, Geneviève's sweetheart is Guy (Castelnuovo), a young boy working in the local garage and lives with his auntie Élise (Perrey) and an orphan girl Madeleine (Farner). The film is slickly divided into three parts: departure, absence and return, Guy is mandatorily drafted in the army in 1958, two lovers have to be split for two years. In the second act, told in Geneviève's perspective, she is pregnant with Guy's baby, but gradually persuaded by her mother to marry an affluent man Roland Cassard (Michel) and they left Cherbourg after the wedlock; and in the third act, Guy returns from the war, becomes despondent of Geneviève's betrayal, but life must go on, he inherits some fortune from Élise and marries Madeleine, and they have a boy named François.Years later, they inadvertently meet at the gas station owned by Guy, Geneviève is accompanied by their young daughter Françoise, always the most awkward reunion for two former lovers, the film ends in a more rational note when they gingerly trade conversations, leaving too many unsaid undertones flowing torrentially, and a timely farewell is a befitting coda to the lingering blues. The story may be a bit sad and nondescript, but the biggest asset is its varicolored locale settings, costumes and coiffure à la mode, even for the not-so-rich protagonists. Guy's brown suit ill-matches his black shoe, nevertheless his azure and pink shirts are divine, as for Denueve and Vernon, the daughter-mother pair dominates the show every time with their distinctive flair for haute couture and color compatibility.Also, let's not forget it is an out-and-out musical, singing voices are all dubbed at post- production nevertheless, French is already mellifluous in speaking, so the singing part sounds like an unremitting bombardment of chansons, which inconveniently degrades into monotony soon after, thus it does demand a more tonality-friendly ear to revel in the excessiveness, after all, it is a love letter to the sentimental romantics, a lovely treat for eyeballs and eardrums equally.

armadiddle I first happened on this exquisite jewel of a movie several years ago after my teenage son told me he'd watched an unusually poignant episode of Futurama featuring a song called "I Will Wait For You". Intrigued, i did some research and found that it was written by Michel Legrand and Jacques Demy and was from a cult French musical movie called The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, in which every word of dialogue was sung. This i had to see, so I ordered it up on DVD. From the minute i first started watching it i was entranced, and i still am today. My son watched it with me, and so was he. This unique film is almost beyond criticism. I don't agree with the often levelled objection that the central theme is slight. The pain of young love, and the dawning realisation of how the world really works, these are things of universal importance. I love the way the movie raises so many questions that could have so many different answers. Did Genevieve ever really love Guy? Did she/will she ever really get over him? Did he/will he ever really get over her? I love the way it creates the drama using believable characters who in their own ways, despite the mistakes they make, are all actually rather likable. The use of colour and attention to detail are amazing, the music striking and memorable, and the English subtitles are terrific. A lot of films are let down by their subtitles, but these are literate, witty and often quite subtle. (At least they are in one of the two versions I've come across. The other, which from its reference to gasoline rather than petrol I assume to be American in origin, is considerably inferior.)For all those reasons i would already have considered it my favourite movie ever, even before i recently and belatedly bought on DVD Demy's earlier film Lola. Watching that movie has brought a whole new dimension to Umbrellas. It features one of the characters in Umbrellas, Roland Cassard, and his love for a dancer, which is recapped briefly in the later film. We learn how although Lola has a good heart and cares for Roland, she can't return his love because her heart belongs to another man, Michel, the father of her child, who left seven years before and has never come back. She has never quite given up hoping that he will, but tells Roland she plans to go away for a couple of months to think about things, implying that there may be a chance for them when they meet again. Roland meanwhile is himself about to go abroad on business, so will also have a chance to put his thoughts in order. The situation is further complicated by Roland's friendship, mirroring what happens in Umbrellas, with an attractive widow who is obviously interested in Roland and has a precocious teenage daughter (though this one is 14 rather than 16).Lola the movie ends with Roland about to leave for Johannesburg, unaware that Michel has just returned unexpectedly and Lola has committed her future to him. Roland has spent most of his life up till now in his home city of Nantes drifting through a series of unsuitable jobs, and in desperation has agreed to a decidedly dodgy assignment involving the smuggling of diamonds. When we next see him a few years later in Cherbourg, 200 miles from Nantes, he's a rich and successful businessman in the jewellery trade who's always away on mysterious business trips. So what is he doing in Cherbourg? Has it got anything to do with the fact that the widow's daughter Cecile went there when she ran away from home? Was he bitter when he found out about Lola and Michel and how did it alter his view of the world? Is his wealth based on the proceeds from smuggling, and if so is Genevieve at any time aware of this? Why can't Roland aspire to anything more than a marriage of convenience? What's the real significance of the parallel between the two widows and their daughters? Could Umbrellas possibly have a darker subtext than is commonly suspected? You could keep returning to these questions again and again over the course of a lifetime, and that, more than anything else, is why i like this movie so much.