The Young Girls of Rochefort

Set in the French seaside town of Rochefort over a few days around a fair, the film follows twin sisters Delphine and Solange Garnier, who give music and dance lessons and long for romance and for lives beyond the provinces. Their mother, Yvonne, runs a café where fairground performers and visitors gather. Among those passing through are two young men who invite the sisters to appear in a show, a sailor searching for an ideal woman, an American musician returning to see an old friend, and a music-shop owner with a past connection to Yvonne. Over a single weekend, the sisters and others come close to the partners they have been hoping for.

Jacques Demy wrote and directed this musical romance, his fifth feature, arriving between The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Donkey Skin. Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac play the twins, with Danielle Darrieux as their mother, Michel Piccoli as Simon Dame, Jacques Perrin as the sailor Maxence, and Gene Kelly as Andy Miller. Gilbert de Goldschmidt produced for Parc Film and Madeleine Films; the production credits list 69 cast members and 49 crew.

The film has held a strong reputation over the decades. It scores 7.7 out of 10 on IMDb across roughly 14,000 votes and the same 7.7 on TMDB from a much smaller pool of about 674 votes, while a critics' rating stands at 8.1 from 45 reviews. Those figures point to a widely liked film whose standing rests at least as much on critical regard as on broad audience approval.