Three Seats for the 26th is a 1988 French film directed by Jacques Demy.
Yves Montand plays...Yves Montand, who has come back to his home town of Marseilles. Montand is starring in an autobiographical stage show, "Montand Remembers", about his youth in the city and his rise to fame. The show is built around his relationship with The One That Got Away, a Marseilles hooker named Mylene LeGoff, whom Montand still thinks about decades later. In the show the character is named "Maria", but Mylene is a real person, and Montand hopes to meet her again.
Meanwhile there's a show to put on. Montand is unpleasantly surprised to learn that his leading lady, Betty, is pregnant, and in fact is leaving the show. Enter Marion de Lambert (Mathilda May) a 22-year-old shopgirl and huge Yves Montand fan with ambitions of making it in show business. Marion, who has already used her good looks to make the acquaintance of Montand, lands the part of "Maria". She does not tell her mother, Marie-Helene, who, as it happens, knows Yves Montand from way back when.
Can you guess The Reveal?
Jacques Demy's last film. Francoise Fabian (My Night at Maud's) plays Marie-Helene.
Tropes:
- As Himself: Yves Montand plays Yves Montand, coming back to Marseilles to put on a show about his life and just maybe find an old girlfriend.
- Autobiographical Role: In-Universe in show "Montand Remembers", which is actually about the life of the real Yves Montand (he did work in the Marseilles shipyard as a riveter, Édith Piaf did give him his big break, he really was married to Simone Signoret).
- Book Ends: The first scene has Yves Montand and his theater troupe arrive in Marseilles by train, to put on his show. The last scene has everyone leaving by train, preparing to stage his smash hit show in London and Paris.
- Call-Back: In an early scene Maria, who can't stand rose petal jam, finds it gross that her mom eats it "by the spoonful". At the climax, Montand's comment about how his old girlfriend used to love rose petal jam leads directly to the exchange where Marion finds out that the man she just had sex with is her dad.
- Dedication: The opening credits end with the dedication "To Agnes V.", namely, Demy's wife Agnès Varda.
- Disturbed Doves: A theatrical moment in the "Montand Remembers" show has Maria tracking down Yves Montand, only to see him meeting an actress playing Simone Signoret. In the show a gate opens and a bunch of disturbed doves flutter out of it, before Montand and Signoret walk through the gate and the scene ends.
- Dramatic Irony: Marion hits the audience over the head with this when she turns down Tony's invitation for a date by saying he's like her brother, "and I'm not into incest." This is in a conversation where she admits how much she's crushing on Yves Montand, whom the viewer has already learned is her biological father.
- Fanservice Extra: The chorus girls in the show, who wear only thongs and pasties over their nipples, probably because it's France. One man backstage praises how good-looking they are.
- Foreshadowing: Betty complains of headaches and Tony the director notes that she's been cranky, and later a costume designer notes that she's gained weight and they had to let out her costumes. She's three months pregnant.
- The Ghost: Marie-Helene's husband and Marion's father, the Baron de Lambert, who has just been sent to prison to serve five years for financial fraud. He's discussed at length, as Marie-Helene says that Marion is an aristocrat and shouldn't be working in musical theater, and later Marie-Helene says that she was two months pregnant when she got married and tricked him into thinking he was Marion's dad. He's never shown onscreen.
- Imagine Spot: Things get a little weird when Marion's big song, about how she loves Yves Montand and wants to star on the stage with him, is joined by a spectral version of Yves Montand in a white tux, singing along.
- Internal Reveal: Not quite 2/3 of the way through the film it's revealed that, yes, Marion is Montand's biological daughter. But neither Marion nor Yves find that out until the end, which is why the Surprise Incest happens.
- Just Friends: Marion politely but firmly turns down the advances of Tony the director, saying "You're like the brother I've never had. And I'm not into incest." (That last being massive Dramatic Irony.)
- Match Cut: There's a shot of Montand reading the paper the morning after the show, and nodding with approval at the story quote that describes Marion as "the toast of Marseilles". Then the scene cuts to Marie-Helene reading the same story and folding up the paper in the same way, except that she's doing it in disgust.
- Meet Cute: Engineered by Marion, who gets someone to sneak her into the theater, where she finds Yves Montand outside of his dressing room, proclaims herself his biggest fan, and gets him to give her tickets to the show as well as permission to watch rehearsals.
- The Musical Musical: Sort of, as several numbers from the stage musical "Montand Remembers" are part of the movie, but there are also songs outside of the stage show, like the opening number and the song that Marion and her coworkers sing in the beauty salon.
- Off-into-the-Distance Ending: Ends with Yves Montand, his Old Flame Marie-Helene, and, um, his Surprise Incest daughter by Marie-Helene, all walking away from the camera up the steps to the train station. They're going off together to Paris, where Marion will star in his show and who knows what else will happen.
- Show Within a Show: Yves Montand has come to his hometown to put on a show about his life called "Montand Remembers".
- Stage Name: In-Universe, the show "Montand Remembers" explains how the former Ivo Livi came up with the stage name "Yves Montand". His Italian mother calls out "Ivo, monta"—"come up". Inspired, Ivo rolls some variations on "Ivo Monta" around before coming up with Yves Montand.
- Surprise Incest: The ending has Yves and Marion, who have been flirting with each other relentlessly for the whole movie, finally have sex, only for her to find out the very next morning that she is his biological daughter. Does she join a nunnery? Does she sign up for a lifetime of psychotherapy? No and no. After taking a moment to digest this she goes home, gets her mother (now that she knows that Montand is her mother's old lover), and brings them together. Montand has the briefest of Oh, Crap! moments when he realizes just what has happened, before Marie-Helene embraces him and the three of them go off to Paris together. The film then ends without revealing to the audience just what's going to happen to this super-weird family in the future.
- Title Drop: Marion's song about how she likes Yves Montand and will ask him for tickets to his show ends with her singing "I turn on the charm and ask him for three seats on the 26th."
- Writers Cannot Do Math: The story of In-Universe show "Montand Remembers" states that Mylene and Yves were separated when he had to leave Marseilles to avoid conscription for forced labor during the war, so she should be about as old as 67-year-old Montand. The story doesn't say how old she is but she's clearly significantly younger than Montand (Francoise Fabian was 55). Also, it strains credulity for a woman who was old enough to marry an industrialist during World War II to have a 22-year-old daughter in 1988.
