by Chris Marshall:
Believe it or not, Gigi is a pretty good movie. When I see a period piece musical set in France, the last thing I expect is to like it, but here we are.
Leslie Caron, who we last saw in An American in Paris, plays the title role so well that I completely forgot about how much I didn’t like her character in that film. It had nothing to do with her, but nothing happened to make me care. In Gigi, though, she’s charming, devious, mischievous, a sort of primordial Juno, if Juno were less abrasive.
Indeed, it is the performances as a whole, rather than the musical numbers themselves, that make this movie so effective. Alongside Caron, Louis Jordan is also tremendous as Gaston, the upper-class socialite/playboy who ultimately falls for Gigi. And Maurice Chevalier as the quasi-narrator Honoré is extremely enjoyable as well .
