“Nous sommes deux soeurs jumelles, nees sous la signe des gemeaux”…that candy-colored tangerine-flake French musical-comedy classic, “The Young Girls of Rochefort,” will be showing in Central Park on Cedar Hill (enter at Fifth Avenue and 79th Street) Friday evening under the stars, starting around 8:30. It’s free! Don’t miss it.
“Les Demoiselles de Rochefort” is a twinkly diamond of a film, a treat for fashion lovers and one of my favorite French films of the ’60s. Who can forget real-life sisters Catherine Deneuve and Francoise Dorleac as singing twins in giant pink and yellow hats belting out Michel Legrand’s poptastic “Chanson des Jumelles” (check out this clip) or the splashy pastels and bright summery locations? Featuring Gene Kelly and “West Side Story”‘s George Chakiris, it’s a sort of fizzy light-comedy flip side of director Jacques Demy’s other classic, the tragic “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.” Even “Rochefort” was not without its own unintended grim undertone: Dorleac was killed in a car accident shortly after filming. She was 25.