Parking

Demy's career peaked early, the references, tone, sentiments all fixed and fully explored by the end of the '60s. His later movies all seemed to misfire in one way or another, not least this passing strange musical adaptation of Greek myth, in which Orpheus is represented as a French pop star of Eurovision-esque vapidity, performing a Michel Legrand score which veers from the characteristically inventive to the characteristically saccharine. The scenes in the Underworld (reached via doward spiralling car park) have some force, and it would be worth knowing whether the director, who died in 1990, had already felt the touch of mortality when he embarked on this project. The hero's upfront bisexuality indicates a buried motif running through much of Demy's work.