"The Young Girls of Rochefort" (1967)

Jacques Demy's The Young Girls of Rochefort features all the sweetness and whimsey of the MGM musicals turned up to eleven. But rather than this becoming saccharine and excessive, it's infectious. The film is giddy and eye-popping and pure escapism. Yet Demy's guidance also never lets the affair turn mawkish. The film is tempered by an underlying sense of melancholy -- people keep missing opportunities or yearning for the past. But still, the music is playful, and the characters use music as an expressive way for livening up dreary and dour times. The elegiac emotional counterpointing of the pop-rock lightness creates a musical quite unlike any other (except perhaps for Demy's own exquisite The Umbrellas of Cherbourg). There's still room for unabashed romantic swooning, but it ultimately feels more earned due to a real sense of struggle and bitterness.

Grade: ★★★