Trois Places pour le 26

A wistful song, an iris-in on a train station, and another bittersweet Demy-Legrand musical is under way. Montand stars as Yves Montand, in Marseilles for a show based on his life. Between rehearsals, he revisits his old dockside haunts and thinks about lost love Mylène, left pregnant years before. And he meets a stage-struck girl who, inevitably, is handed her big chance when the show's female lead drops out. Unbeknownst, of course, she's the daughter of long-lost Mylène, and the film teasingly pirouettes around an impending act of incest. Demy indulges his penchant for corny choreography, mother-daughter relationships and structural complications (the fictionalised Montand on screen appearing as an unfictionalised Montand on stage). Quirky, appealing and, in effect, Demy's farewell to cinema.