Reviewed by John Barker © 2005
- Take a pot shot but be warned.

        The cinematic penchant for French film certainly reached its climax during the 60’s New Wave movement, which exposed the varied artistic talents of Francois Truffant, Jean Renoir, and Jean-Luc Goddard. Unfortunately, Gallic film could not withstand the overbearing presence of commercial cinema and although figures like Luc Besson and Jean-Pierre Jeunet have embraced Hollywood filmmaking, the effect on the whole has been negative.

            It seems over recent years that France as a nation is ethnographically identified by a series of Stella Artois adverts, themselves inspired by the Provençal lifestyle explored in the films Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources. Inhabiting this same rustic terrain is The Chorus, a film with two Oscar nominations and the auspicious title of ‘The most successful French film of 2003’.

Although, Christophe Barratier’s film may have garnered the most francs at the box office, it does little to challenge A Very Long Engagement in the dramatic stakes. The film is not a complete failure, it just doesn’t to conjure up anything resembling originality, take the plot for instance: a middle-aged teacher named Mathieu (Gérard Jugnot) tries to tame a class of reluctant students – see Peter Weir’s Dead Poet’s Society. Then using music, our corpulent teacher financially resurrects the Fond d’Etang school and pacifies the Dickensian headmaster, all in one swish from the baton of Mr Holland’s Opus. Cliché is the piècē dē résistance, as the director even pillages the depths of Sister Act and Patch Adams.

This is not to say that the film isn’t charming or in anyway enjoyable, it just gets a little lost in the melodrama of the story. The film’s historical setting of post- Second World War France is one of the more interesting elements of The Chorus, as the children are fatherless and register their damaged nationalistic pride through the figure of Napoleon. The echoes of a war fought on the French territory are also evident in the Draconian methods of imprisonment and solitary confinement that the badly behaved pupils experience, which are certainly inspired by the awful treatment of the French-Jewish community during the conflict. The WWII analogy continues when the choir is banned by the obnoxious headmaster and goes underground in a juvenile form of Lā Résistancē.

 When the choir is finally resurrected and asked to perform in front of some important dignitaries, the Oscar-nominated music really elevates the film, allowing it to finish on a high note. On the other hand the performances are more B flat than F sharp with Jugnot exhibiting just enough emotion and pathos to carry the film, while his youthful understudies do little apart from the required musical numbers.

Theatrics aside, this film is unfulfilling, sentimental and hammy in places, but just like French pastry, its sweet and you can’t help but want more.