DE Weekly: Demy, Love, & The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Below is an archived email originally sent on February 9, 2026.
Demy, Love, & The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
In Existentialism, the past, present, and future are always in focus. Much of what the existentialist authors wrote about these three states of time emphasized their role in determining how our lives will turn out.
The past acts as the “givenness” of our life: a fixed period of time that has come and gone and that we cannot change. In this way, it is devoid of choices; there is nothing more we can do with the past.
The present acts as a period of creation: we are entirely responsible for our actions in the present, and can shape our lives through our own decisions.
The future is where our primary focus is: we can define our lives by the possibilities we choose to pursue and those we do not.
Inherent to the past, present, and future is one constant: regret. No matter where we are in life, we tend to reminisce and inevitably regret some of the “lost possibilities” we did not realize.
I recently watched Jacques Demy’s 1964 musical film Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg).
This film follows the romance between a beautiful young couple, Geneviève and Guy, as they are ripped apart when Guy is drafted to serve in the Algerian War. Before he leaves, Geneviève becomes pregnant, carrying their child while he is away.
The film is broken into three acts––“The Departure,” “The Absence,” and “The Return”––serving as a representation of those three states of time; past, present, and future.
In the first act, we hear musical composer Michel Legrand’s “Je ne pourrai jamais vivre sans toi,” or “I could never live without you.”
Unfortunately for the young lovers, this doesn’t come to pass.
When Guy leaves from the station for his military service, the second act begins. In Guy’s absence, Geneviève’s love begins to fade. Guy’s letters come less frequently, and her and her mother’s economic situation leads her to accept a proposal from a wealthy man named Roland.
A despondent Geneviève remarks, “I would have died for (Guy) . . . So why aren’t I dead?” In time, she accepts that their love is not meant to be. Roland agrees to raise her child and be a provider for her and her mother.
In the third and final act, Guy returns home to Cherbourg from Algeria. He visits the umbrella shop Geneviève and her mother owned only to find it boarded up for sale and both of them gone.
After a brief depressive episode, he forms a relationship with his dying aunt’s caretaker Madeleine, ultimately marrying her, having a child of their own, and achieving a different path to happiness than the one he thought he had figured out before.
It isn’t until years later that Geneviève returns to Cherbourg, stopping at the gas station Guy opened up to fill up her car. Sitting in her car while she goes into the station is their child.
Snow blankets the outside while Geneviève and Guy meet for the first time in years, sharing a brief exchange updating each other on their lives.
Both of them tell the other that they are happy, and they separate, seemingly content with where they have both ended up.
As the film comes to a close, we are left wondering, is this a happy ending? Or a sad one?
After all, Geneviève and Guy seemed perfect for each other: two young lovers planning to share their lives together forever. But life got in the way.
Nevertheless, as is often the case, they were both able to find another route to happiness, albeit not the one they once dreamed of.
In this way, the ending is not necessarily only happy or only sad; it is realistic. It’s true to life.
Writer and film critic Jim Ridley wrote that “people only die of love in movies.” With this thought in mind, Demy ends this particular story more like a real life story than a fictional one: neither of these lovers die. They keep on living.
This is why it is so true to reality. Because in real life, people don’t die from love all that often. They keep going, right on living.
It’s the same with anything else. People lose their jobs, they lose loved ones, they face challenges and setbacks, and they lose certain possibilities to the past, never to recover them again.
The past is “calcified,” leaving us with the present to shape our future.
In the face of a world that is largely indifferent to our desires, things get in the way of what we think we want. All that is left for us to do is adjust and continue to create lives of meaning and happiness.
There is a bittersweet reality we all have to face and somehow find comfort in. To move forward.
Life is full of trade-offs. But it is these very trade-offs that lead to unexpected happiness and fulfillment. Very often, these unexpected conditions can make our lives richer.
In many ways, Les Parapluies de Cherbourg is an illustration of how we plan our lives according to romantic ideals that do not pan out, and how we actually end up living them.
Not entirely happy. Not entirely sad. But real––entirely, unabashedly, eternally real.
The past is fixed, and thus always the same. It will wait for you and always be there forever. The present is yours: your decisions shape the life you will live. The future is eternal: it is yours always to dream of, to plan, and eventually to live to the fullest.
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
No one does it quite like the French when it comes to stuff like this. Give this film a watch. I promise it’s a good one.
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