The Young Girls of Rochefort (Les demoiselles de Rochefort)

Delphine and Solange, played by real-life siblings Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac, are two sisters living in Rochefort and longing for Paris. Delphine is a dancing teacher, and Solange composes and teaches the piano. Also mooning about Rochefort are Maxence (Jacques Perrin), a poet and painter who is doing his military service, and American Andy Miller (legendary MGM star Gene Kelly), a successful composer. All are looking for love, looking for each other, unaware that their ideal partner is very close. French stars Danielle Darrieux and Michel Piccoli round out the cast of once and future lovers.

Writing in Salon, critic Stephanie Zacharek says the film “delivers two purring hours of pleasure. As well as being a love story in itself, it’s a musical love letter to the idea of musicals, to the notion that people can suddenly be so overcome with their feelings that they burst into song on the street, or pirouette across a city square.” She observes that Demy and his collaborator, composer Michel Legrand, offer a “tribute to the splashy, big-scale musicals of the ’50s, particularly Vincente Minnelli extravaganzas like ‘An American in Paris’ and ‘The Band Wagon.’ They even enlisted Gene Kelly to play one of the romantic heroes.”