Jacques Demy
1964
91 minutes
Oh man. This is a sung-through musical from 1964 starring Catherine Deneuve. It's pretty and charming enough that even your musical-theater-hating proto-goth wife might have enjoyed it if you had been able to successfully drag her to the revival theater to see it. You're especially sad that your musical-loving father never got to see this since he would have loved it for sure.
This isn't exactly a French New Wave film, but you're going to find it's a pretty good gateway drug for anyone you know who loves musicals to get their foot in the door for other movies. The director, Jacques Demy, was married to Agnès Varda, after all.
Part of you wants to go back to another Choose Your Own Adventure-type gamebook you played in the past so you could see what would have happened if you had made a different choice. In that gamebook, you followed up watching Amélie cuddled up on your couch on a cold winter night under blankets with the sad and vulnerable gal you were dating at the time. Instead of putting this film in next, you instead opted for having an emotionally tricky conversation with her about where your doomed relationship was heading, which ended with her leaving in tears.
You didn't see her for a few months after that. Then she suddenly reappeared one spring day at your place and walked over with you to go sit on the pier on the lake you lived next to. That time you kept your mouth shut and let her do the talking until she became distracted by your badly-chapped lips which were cracked and bleeding and she leaned in so close to you that you could feel her breath on your face. And she kept spitting on a kleenex to dab the blood off your lips until she gave up with the kleenex and just started licking the blood off your lips like some kind of deranged vampire and next thing you knew her tongue was in your mouth and neither of you came up for air for at least a minute or two and it was the most passionate kiss you'd ever had to that point in your life. And when she finally caught her breath she looked up at you with her enormous eyes and declared, in her unusual way, "Whoa, that gave me the willies" and then paused and said, "I want more willies," and led you by the hand wordlessly rushing back across the street and back into your apartment complex and back onto the same spot on your couch where you had snuggled up months ago.
She noted she had to leave for her work shift across town in fifteen minutes and you made out some more and unzipped each other's pants and gave each other hasty handjobs and it was somehow sweet and sad in its own sordid way and nothing like anything you'd encounter in this movie and then you somehow never really crossed paths again until you had a serious girlfriend that you weren't stupid enough to risk losing over another fling with this girl, who was yet again living with her abusive ex-boyfriend at the time who had already threatened to kill you if he ever caught you in the apartment they shared--not that that had ever deterred you in the past.
You never read ahead to see what was down the other path where you watched this film instead. But if it was anything short of at least being happily married for nearly fifteen years to a different wonderful woman (at least before tragedy struck), then you probably aren't that interested.
Time to choose something different: