

User Score
3 votes
The drag queens of the La Sirène à Barbe cabaret put on a grandiose show of song, circus and dance, the likes of which Dieppe has never seen before. Erwan, a local fisherman, is spellbound. He ventures into their world of joy and celebration and discovers, behind the costumes of the stage characters, tormented, lonely, over-sensitive human beings ready to do anything to carry this project as far as possible. It's a portrait of a small port town inhabited as much by gloomy daily lives as by extraordinary destinies.
Status
Released
Original Language
FR
The film follows four families, with different nationalities (French, German, Russian and American) but with the same passion for music, from the 1930s to the 1960s. The various story lines cross each other time and again in different places and times, with their own theme scores that evolve as time passes. The main event in the film is the Second World War, which throws the stories of the four musical families together and mixes their fates. Although all characters are fictional, many of them are loosely based on historical musical icons (Édith Piaf, Josephine Baker, Herbert von Karajan, Glenn Miller, Rudolf Nureyev, etc.) The Boléro dance sequence at the end brings all the threads together.