New releases

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

Les Parapluies de Cherbourg

Jacques Demy’s all-sung tale of first love is a ravishing mix of music, romance and fertile cinematic invention.

France-West Germany 1964
Dir Jacques Demy
With Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo, Anne Vernon, Marc Michel
93min
Digital
English subtitles
Certificate PG
A BFI release

Geneviève (Deneuve) is in love with car mechanic Guy (Castelnuovo), but her mother (Vernon) has other ideas. Her umbrella shop isn’t doing well; besides, there’s the war in Algeria… In Demy’s bittersweet classic Michel Legrand’s achingly lovely score, the vibrant colour-coding of Bernard Evein’s art direction, Jean Rabier’s elegant, fluid camerawork and the uniformly rhapsodic performances are brought together to turn an unusually sombre – even dark – storyline into an enchanting fairy tale that muses wisely, and very movingly, on the workings of chance and fate. Few filmmakers have dealt with the everyday realities of life so imaginatively, tenderly or magically.

Geoff Andrew, Programmer-at-large

See our Seniors’ matinee + intro by actor/director Burt Caesar.

The screening at 18:30 in NFT2 on 10 December will be introduced by the BFI Future Film Steering Group: a collective of film programmers aged 16-25. The screening will be followed by a discussion (and a free drink!) in the BFI Benugo Bar & Kitchen, for audience members aged 16-25. More details can be found on our Facebook page.

See our Musicals! season.