Tale as Old as Time

The story of Gigi and Gaston is relentlessly linear, moving from the point-of-view of one lover, to the other, and back again. After all, how else could we feel the full effect of Gigi's transformation and Gaston's love for her?

The Wheel of Life

Gigi is all about the cycle of life for the French Romantic, from dreamy toddler to doddering old fool. So who better to narrate the scenes than Honoré Lachaille, who has seen and done it all? He speaks to us directly while he saunters through the park, introducing us to Gigi, to Paris in 1900, to the many visual delights of ladies in those crazy colorful Cecil Beaton get-ups.

We follow the cycle of one couple all the way through, or thereabouts, so is it a surprise when in the final scene we end up back in the park to see Gigi and Gaston, now happily hitched? Absolutely not. The film made it inevitable.

And the Montage of Life

There's only one point in the movie when Gigi's and Gaston's story lines meet while not in the room together. It's a technique used a few times during the movie (as when we learn in a newspaper headline that Liane has been dumped like yesterday's trash), but just once to such stupendous affect.

This happens when Gaston is encouraged by Honoré to ensure that everyone sees how absolutely "fine" he is in the wake of his break-up with Liane. We're treated to a montage of gossip mag illustrations which fade into real life scenes, as Gaston hosts dinner parties, costume balls, and the opera in the Lachaille mansion. As the final page turns, we see a gloved hand. Soon after, the shot reveals that they're Gigi's hands as she reads the gossip and helps her grandmama snap beans for supper.

This montage (which also reveals that Gaston is so bored at all of these events that he literally falls asleep) brings to focus the fact that the Lachailles live in the public eye, and that Gigi is a member of the spectator-public. This of course causes no little amount of strife as Gigi begins to understand what it will mean to be a Gaston's next girlfriend: she'll always be on display.