Director: Christophe Barratier
Cast: Gérard Jugnot, François Berléand, Jean-Baptiste Maunier, Jacques Perrin, Kad Merad, Marie Bunel, Philippe Du Janerand, and Jean-Paul Bonnaire
Rating: 12
Length: 93 minutes
Country: France



On 15 January 1949, the former music teacher Clément Mathieu (Gérard Jugnot) arrives in "Fond de l' Etang" ("Bottom of the Well"), a boarding school for orphans and problematic boys, to work as an inspector. The place is administrated with iron fist by the cruel director Rachin (François Berléand), and most of the boys have severe punishments for their faults. Clément decides to teach the boys to sing in a choir in their spare time, and identify the musical potential of the rebel Pierre Morhange (Jean-Baptiste Maunier), the son of a beautiful single mother for whom he feels a crush. He also has a special feeling for the young Pépinot (Maxence Perrin), a boy that expects the visit of his father every Saturday near the gate, but indeed lost his parents in the war. With his methods, Clément changes the lives of the boys, of the other employees and his own.

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"Loosely adapted from the 1947 film A Cage of Nightingales, The Chorus has a strong, well-told story in which the activities of the choir form the background. (The choir heard intermittently throughout the film is Les Petits Chanteurs de Saint-Marc.) Barratier plays against the potential sentimentality of his material with enough humor and tough-mindedness to achieve a note of bittersweetness that seems just right. Warm, intimate and perceptive, "The Chorus" succeeds completely, with Jugnot its mainstay in a winning portrayal of a seemingly ordinary man of much resilience and considerable inner resources." Kevin Thomas