Retro Varda/Demy

UNE CHAMBRE EN VILLE

ZIMMER IN DER STADT, EIN
Jacques Demy
FRA 1983
92 min
V'06

In the style of an operetta, this melodramatic story is set in Nantes in 1955 and centers around the tragedies of three or four intertwined lives. First, there is the young steel worker (Richard Berry) who is out on strike and has rented a room from an upper-class widow (Danielle Darrieux), a woman in sympathy with the strikers. The blue-collar worker has a girlfriend he finds less and less interesting just as she is more and more pregnant, and their relationship seems fated to end, one way or another. Then there is Edith (Dominique Sanda), the daughter of the widow, married to a wealthy, impotent, skinflint of a merchant caught up in his own neuroses, and, whether for that reason or several others, Edith is a part-time hooker. One evening she shows up in the worker's rented room, wearing a fur coat and nothing else, and the two share a night of passion. Now mother, daughter, the worker, and the daughter's husband have formed a very unstable chain of relationships, due to snap because at least one link is exceedingly weak. Enhanced by excellent choreography, this film still did poorly at the box office when it was first released. In order to save it and encourage audiences to see it for its own merits, 76 French critics took out an ad in Le Monde to promote the film, and some critics said that if this movie failed, so would all of French cinema. Perhaps it is not surprising then that <![CDATA[<i>]]>Une chambre en ville<![CDATA[</i>]]> won the French Critics' Prix Méliès in 1982.

Credits
  • Fabienne Guyon
  • Anna Gaylor
  • Dominique Sanda - Edith Leroyer
  • Richard Berry - François Gilbaud
  • Danielle Darrieux - Margot Langlois
  • Michel Piccoli - Edmond Leroyer
  • Jean-François Stévenin - Dambiel
  • Jacques Demy
  • Jean Penzer
  • André Hervée
  • Sabine Mamou
  • Michel Colombier
  • Bernard Evein
  • Danielle Darrieux/Fabienne Guyon/Florence Davis/Liliane Davis/Marie-France Roussel/Jacques Revaux
  • Rosalie Varda
  • Jacques Demy
Progefi

Ciné Tamaris 88 rue Daguerre 75014 Paris, Frankreich T 1 43 22 66 00 cine-tamaris@wanadoo.fr

35 mm
col
Related Movies