There's some door-slamming farce in his film and a certain amount of romantic rue as well. Christie has already won prizes for the knowing weariness of her performance, and Flynn Boyle probably deserves some for her ferociously stated frustrations. But their clarity can't quite cut through the thickness of the film's air or compensate for the wooziness it induces. Anyway, the sight stuns the parents of the boy who makes his entrance so gaily bedecked. Everyone goes instantly agog.
Schoolboys turn into bullies, ready to take the natural law into their own hands.
The film, directed by Alain Berliner from an original script by Chris vander Stappen, has the scheme of a socially fretful TV movie. Yet at heart, Ma Vie en Rose is a delightful comedy, both in its buoyant dream sequences and in Ludo's vagrant, clumsy stabs at embryonic machismo. But the film is most sympathetic to Ludo's desperate, deadpan certitude that he'd enjoy being a girl.