Entertaining feel-good French movie

Rating: 7/10 (8 April 2010)

"The Chorus" is an entertaining, rather sentimental movie. The theme of a new character coming to a school and turning the life of the children around isn't original but it is dealt with well here.
A famous conductor's mother dies. He returns to France for the funeral and memories of his childhood come flooding back when an old school pal comes to visit. We then go back in time to see Clement Mathieu (Gérard Jugnot ) starting work at a remote boarding school for troublesome boys. The headmaster thinks that harsh discipline is the only way to keep control of the school. Naturally the new employee thinks differently and through his own love of music he tries to make the kids lives a bit better.
The film is beautifully shot, using the countryside and the old building that serves as the school to give us a feeling of the enclosed world of the boys. The sets and costumes are also excellent in giving us the sense of the era the film is set. The child actors are very good and the script does well to develop a lot of the boy's characters rather than just concentrating on one or two.
The ending might be too sweet for some people's liking. If it were a Hollywood movie there would probably be howls of derision that it wasn't gritty enough. However it is in keeping with the sentimental theme going through the movie.