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Parking

Directed by Jacques Demy.
With Francis Huster, Laurent Malet, Keïko Ito.
France, 1985, DCP, color, 95 min.
French with English subtitles.
DCP source: Ciné-Tamaris

Dedicated to Jean Cocteau “who loved the magic words ‘Once upon a time,” Demy and Michel Legrand reincarnate the legend of Greek myth and Cocteau in the land of 1980’s pop music. Aided by that decade’s adoration of fame, glamour and decadence, Demy places Orpheus center stage where the angelic, gleeful pop star is worshipped by millions. When an accident sends him through the wall of a parking garage and into a bureaucratic underworld ruled by Jean Marais’ Hades, his luck takes a few surreal turns within Demy’s mostly wholesome fantasyland. Despite a few dark notes and a general tone of tenuous temporality, Parking celebrates all aspects of life, love, creativity and even death through a graphic visual sense and Orphée’s strange songs, as well as Demy’s signature optimism and an exuberant embrace of bisexuality as a natural and inclusive expression of love.

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