Dir.
Christophe Barratier, 2004, France/Switzerland/Germany, 96 mins
Cast:
Gérard Jugnot, François Berléand
A sentimental chocolate box of a film, The Chorus provides a nice dose of sheer escapism for those lusting for the nostalgia of forgotten times. In the hands of Hollywood (for which the remake rights have surely already been sold), this would have been a saccharine bland bit of work, but Christophe Barratier, making his feature film debut, has managed to avoid the usual pitfalls and instead provides a surprisingly watchable and subtle film. A remake itself (from Jean Dreville's 1945 La Cage aux rossignols/A Cage of Nightingales), the story centres on a lonely failed musician who finds himself teaching at a school for unruly boys. He finds that by giving the boys a focus, they improve their behaviour and start to grow up into responsible beings. So far, so familiar, but the performances are strong and the music teacher Clement Mathieu (played with aplomb by the wonderful Gérard Jugnot) is such a rounded character that the film is both entertaining and moving.
Interestingly, Barratier hasn't updated the setting of this remake, it's still set in the same forties period as the original. Barratier explains, "making a story about a man who teaches singing to children today would mean first of all addressing who those children are. You'd have to get into issues like housing projects, chronic unemployment, assimilation, juvenile delinquency and that wasn't what I wanted to do". Nice answer, but it does mean that although the film is striking, it resonates only in a historical context. Not to say that the film isn't memorable, it is, but teamed with the other big French hit in the past six months, Jeunet's A Very Long Engagement, there seems to be a current, somewhat troubling, trend for period pieces.
This is a film made for middle aged movie goers, the sort of person that says "they don't make them like they used to". Well, they do. In exactly the same style. Barratier argues that The Chorus deals with universal truths, what its like to be a human being: "Everyone remembers the feeling of injustice and abandonment that a child feels when his parents are absent or deceased, the rebellion and inhibitions that can stem from it". This is true, but the film still feels very much as if it is aping the Golden Age of Hollywood. This isn't necessarily Barratier's fault. In the UK , we see a fraction of the French films actually being produced. It just seems a shame that the choice increasingly seems to be limited to the sort of stuff that was churned out of the LA studios in the fifties.
However, in Barratier's defence, the film has been a huge hit in his home country too. After all, with large parts of the media seemingly intent on scaremongering, one can hardly blame the public for dashing to see some sweet old fashioned entertainment. And that's exactly what this film supplies. Masses of it. It's a pretty watch too. Barratier is a promising director and the performances he gets from the child actors is reminiscent of Spielberg. In particular, the young Jean-Baptiste Maunier, a boy with a voice as beautiful as his porcelain skin, is mesmerising. Apparently, he's gone on to perform at sell-out concerts throughout France . If The Chorus does as well in the UK as it has in France, one can only assume he'll be playing the Barbican sometime soon.
Elizabeth Hyder
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