Jacques Demy: le rose et le noir

More than 30 years after his widow Agnès Varda's brilliant Jacquot de Nantes, there is finally a new documentary about Jacques Demy, the director of such colourful musicals as Les parapluies de Cherbourg and Les Demoiselles de Rochefort. Director Florence Platarets was given access to the family's vast archive by Demy's son Mathieu and plus-daughter Rosalie. Platarets decided to tell the story in the first person. It was a bold gamble that paid off: as a viewer, you really get the impression of being inside the director's head. Demy 'tells' about his films in chronological order, and thus about himself, because his work is deeply rooted in who he was and how he saw the world. These films were often not what they seemed at first glance. According to Demy, colour and music were used to mask the pessimism at their heart.