BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: bittersweet rain.

I MIGHT as well admit from the outset that The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) is one of my all-time favourite films. The main motif gets me every-time. That final scene is one of the most amazing bittersweet scenes in cinematic history. And it was an absolute pleasure seeing it on the big-screen for the first time, the colours and music even more vibrant than on a TV. Admittedly it’s not for all tastes, the fact the character sing “hello” and “thank you” to each other, may seem a little redundant – and for many, the all-singing, downbeat feel may take a bit of getting used to. But once you submit yourself to its pleasures – visually, aurally, emotionally – Demy’s film is one of the richest and most rewarding films ever made in my humble opinion.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: a goddess of gamblers.

JEANNE MOREAU was already one of France’s most iconic actors by the time she made Bay of Angels (La Baie des Anges), given the roaring success of her earlier Louis Malle (Les Amants), Michelangelo Antonioni (La Notte) and François Truffaut (Jules et Jim) work. But there’s something about her performance as Jackie Demaistre in Bay of Angels that’s even more bewitching than her iconic roles – she burns the screen up with a rare type of intensity, creating a character, who despite throwing herself headlong into righteous self-destruction or the fact that she gambled away her three-year-old son, you find yourself a moth to her flame. She dominates so much, that the other lead, Claude Mann (as Jean Fournier) comes across as a simpering, highly melodramatic sad-sack, yet you understand his character collapsing in a heap around her. It’s lesser Demy perhaps, but it’s a dark, rich evocation of low-lifes and hopeless romantics.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Demy’s debut.

JACQUES DEMY films capture the bittersweet beauty of life so, so well. Even if he throws in purposefully ridiculous subplots, attacks ‘reality’ with gorgeous imagery, colours or music, or has narratives that contain considerable contrivances and coincidences. Lola was his first film, a box office failure when first released, but it contains many of the germs of his more successful work. That said, it’s a wonderful film in its own right, a moving tribute to the work of Ophuls and von Sternberg, and revelling in the carefree, cinematic atmosphere that spawned the Nouvelle Vague.