A Wonderful Warm Life Affirming Film That Only The French Can Make

Rating: 9/10 (25 July 2005)

England used to make good films, still copied today but not as well (THE LADYKILLERS), but now all it makes is two types of shows: those with shotguns, seedy tattoo parlours, graffiti inner city streets, junkies and fighting and the second about toffs in period costume. Alas there is nothing in between. Only 25 miles away, is England's neighbour, France, which makes regular masterpieces, of which this is a prime example. It is set in the recent past, the late 40's, and concerns the redemption of a failed musician posted to a rural boy's school for rough kids and orphans. Gradually, and you know he will, he forms a choir from these no-hopers, transforming their lives and his own. It is full of charm, warmth, in the best classical way of film-making. A splendid effort, and rightly belongs in your DVD library. Excellent acting,art direction, confident and intelligent direction (surely big projects will now come his way). The music CD is on the best seller charts throughout Europe and understandably so. The music is different by juxtaposition: you see these poorly dressed scruffy boys, living under a repressive regime, yet singing ditties by Rameau like angels about dreams, oceans, and zephyrs. A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT, released at the same time, is a big slick version of quirky Gallic charm, and also excellent, full of crane moves, great cameraman's set ups, and a big-scale version of personal versus macro scale ( a fiancée searching for her missing soldier who did not return from the WW1 trenches ) yet between the two, THE CHORUS lingers in the mind with a fondness and a smile.