Described by director Jacques Demy as 'a film in song', the visually intoxicating The Umbrellas of Cherbourg pays homage to the Hollywood musical whist imbuing it with a resolutely Gallic and decidedly bittersweet tone that explores how youthful fantasy soon give way to thwarted dreams.

Guy Foucher (Nino Castelnuovo), a 20-year-old French auto mechanic, has fallen in love with 17-year-old Genevieve Emery (a luminous Catherine Deneuve), an employee in her widowed mother's chic but financially embattled umbrella shop. On the evening before Guy is to leave for a two-year tour of combat in Algeria, the pair make love. Genevieve becomes pregnant and then must choose between waiting for Guy's return or accepting an attractive offer of marriage from a wealthy diamond merchant (Marc Michel, reprising his role from Demy's masterful Lola).