The plot description bears nothing more than boy meets girl, boy gets drafted, boy loses girl forever. After seeing it cited so many times as an inspiration to the lacking, overpraised La La Land, I watched Jacques Demy's simplistic, entirely sung The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and wound up with the same insipid, uninspired, and totally forgettable feelings I had for its recent progeny and if not for Catherine Deneuve's timeless beauty and the film's radiant use of technicolor, Umbrellas would be a total wash.
** out of ****
