Despite the best efforts of Jacques Demy, French cinema has never really done musicals in the Hollywood manner. Instead, songs were frequently inserted into everyday situations, and director Xavier Giannoli harks back here to the monochrome melodramas of the 1930s in which realist singers like Fréhel and Edith Piaf delivered numbers that both reflected life and commented on the storyline.
Fearing that he will soon be replaced by karaoke machines, ageing artiste Gérard Depardieu performs to drunken nightclub audiences and captive pensioners in care homes. His act is cheesy and reeks of a deluded egotist's desperation to avoid getting a proper job. Yet while Depardieu's music is outdated, it embodies a dual sense of nostalgia and optimism that makes him attractive to the disappointed Clermont-Ferrand housewives who hope to delay the onset of terminal mundanity by sleeping with a visiting celebrity. But, for all his charm, it's Depardieu's vulnerability that eventually breaks down the defences that estate agent Cécile De France erects as he tries to seduce her while searching for a property he has no intention of buying.
It's fascinating to compare this touching age-gap drama with one of Depardieu's earliest outings, Bertrand Blier's Les Valseuses (1974). There, he and fellow delinquent Patrick Dewaere terrorised women of all ages to a jazz score by Stéphane Grappelli. Here, a fiftysomething Depardieu croons variétés standards to a synthesised playback and similarly refuses to take no for an answer after he sets his cap at De France's 30 year-old single mum. In many ways, the portly Alain Moreau, with his dyed hair and inability to understand why he can't always get his own way, is Jean-Claude 30 years on. But he also has a disarming fallability that makes him one of the most engaging characters that Depardieu has played in his 36-year career.
This could easily have been a sordid romance, especially as Depardieu continues to sleep with his manager and ex-wife, Christine Citti. But initial misgiving at his infatuation are quickly quashed, as Giannoli establishes that these misfits actually need one another and their gradual realisation of the fact makes for delightful viewing.
Gerard Depardieu on triumphant form in this delightful romantic drama about an over-the hill nightclub crooner who falls in love with a woman half his age (Cecile De Frace). With sparkling chemistry between the two leads - and Depardieu's unexpectedly good singing voice! - this is the kind of poignant Mai à Décembre romance French cinema does so well.
La Vie en Rose (2 discs)
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The Singer
