Une chambre en ville (1982)

Director: Jacques Demy

Although one of Jacques Demy’s final films, ‘Une chambre en ville’ had been in the works for several decades before it was finally produced in 1982. The action unfolds in Nantes (where Demy spent much of his childhood and adolescence), against the backdrop of the historic 1953 workers’ strike; and yet, the film is essentially a love story between a steelworker (Richard Berry) and an aristocrat (Dominique Sanda). Demy’s second musical film after ‘The Umbrellas of Cherbourg’, ‘Une chambre en ville’ once again demonstrates the director’s ability to whip even the most banal and formulaic story into a sublime frenzy of kitschy songs and dialogue, luscious costumes and scenery. This improbable film – set during one of France’s greatest workers’ uprisings – is pure excess, an explosion of colour, sound and feeling.