Archetypal young lovers: it’s a tale as old as time. Distilled to its elemental base, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is the low stakes romantic tragedy of two teenagers that are drawn apart. Echoes of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet begin to ring – how can this tale be told differently? More provocatively? Almost immediately, however, we realize how this film, directed and written by Jacques Demy, can do so.
Every line of dialogue in this film is sung. No one word is spoken. What seems at first as disorienting, instead, orients the audience to a picture that grapples with one of our most base needs: love. However, even among the bursts of color that splash across the screen, the rich culture of France, and surrounding families that nurtures them, the two leads of this film, Guy and Genevieve, can’t help but feel oppressed. Their love is forbidden, in a sense. Their prospects are underwhelming and unpromising. They’re full of love and devotion, but inexperienced to the world. Guy and Genevieve, played by Nino Castelnuovo and Catherine Deneuve respectively, are placed at the forefront of the picture but are always juxtaposed against it. Jacque Demy reminds us of this in a scene featuring the cultural tradition of Carnival: amidst all of the joy and celebration, the partygoers can’t help but obstruct Genevieve’s way – pushing, shoving, and hurling rice.
This juxtaposition grows throughout the film, as you cannot help but feel something imposing. It is Jacques Demy. Slowly, sometimes still, but always with purpose, Jacques Demy tracks and captures every emotion of a scene. We are pulled meaningfully into both the exhilaration and heartache of these characters. The weight of every slight, praise, and affectation is felt. The final growing pain, that sets the gravity of the picture in motion, is when Guy receives a compulsory military summons in the mail. He has been drafted.
All throughout this growth and motion, however, is the passage of time: a central theme to this picture. The sometimes abrupt, sometimes expected closures to each scene is punctuated with a title card, dictating the passing of a month or year.
As Genevieve says, absence is a funny thing. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg drips with sight, sound, and song – but in its absence, when the film falls silent, you truly feel its weight.
The score of this film is there to remind you that time is still lurching – still pushing. Sometimes the instruments of the score change; sometimes the tempo – yet, it is always there.
I couldn’t help but be drawn into what seemingly felt like the greatest of injustices: a military draft separating true love.
Genevieve sums it up well when she says “I look at this photograph and I forget what he really looks like. When I think of him, it is this photo that I see. It’s all that I’ve got left of him.”
I would die for him. Why am I not dead?