France's fairy tale film is up for an Oscar

PARIS - The motley collection of young boys in short pants and suspenders makes for unlikely stars. But their bell-like voices supply the soul of a story that has swept French movie theaters, surprising hard-nosed critics and the director himself.

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"The Chorus," or "Les Choristes" - director Christophe Barratier's first feature-length film - could have been a quaint and charming portrait from postwar France. But the testimony to the transformative powers of music has clearly entered another realm and taken on a life of its own.

The young stars - none of them professional actors - have become familiar faces in France and choir music has become cool.

The movie, made for $5.5 million, led the list of France's box-office successes in 2004, outshining the comebacks of the lovable Shrek and the magical Harry Potter.

The DVD and video of the film have sold 2.1 million copies since their release in October, a French record, according to the movie magazine Ecran Total. The soundtrack has topped the charts.

"The Chorus" is up for the foreign film Academy Award on Feb. 27. And the movie's "Look To Your Path (Vois Sur Ton Chemin)" is up for the original song Oscar.

Set in 1949, the film tells the story of an out-of-work musician who takes a job as supervisor of a boarding school for troubled boys in the French countryside, and works magic through song.

Critics were less than enthusiastic when the movie came out in France last March. By year's end they conceded that "The Chorus" was a national phenomenon.

"It's the success of the year, but also the mystery," the daily Le Monde wrote in its Jan. 1 edition.

Barratier concurs that the movie's success is phenomenal, "even extravagant," and says there is no single explanation.

"If I could answer, I could do it again," he said in a telephone interview from New York where he was promoting the movie with Miramax.

But the director said the movie seems to have a "universal force."

He has traveled to some 20 countries and "the public reacts exactly in the same way everywhere."

Tourists are making pilgrimages to the Chateau de Ravel, where the film is set in central France's Auvergne region - four times more than usual, said Etienne Brochot, co-owner of the property.

"We kept the name of the school in the movie over the main gate, and everybody is thrilled to get their picture taken in front of it," Brochot said.

And local choirs are having a heyday.

In the past, "choral singing was not a so-called virile activity," said Bernard Lallement of the Association of Choir Directors for the Paris region. "It was better to play soccer than dare confess that you sang in a choir."

Last year saw a 15 percent increase nationwide in children signing up for choirs, according to Thierry Thiebaut, director of a federation of 600 choral groups.

The movie's success is a personal fairy tale for Barratier.

"The Chorus" is inspired by a forgotten 1945 film "La Cage aux Rossignols" (The Cage of Nightingales) by Jean Dreville. But Barratier said it was his own painful childhood that provided the real grist for his movie.

He said he was "exactly" like the children shown in the film, enrolled in a country school after his parents' divorce and "very depressed, very timid, very solitary."

Then, a music teacher "transformed my life."

Will there be a sequel?

"Out of the question," Barratier says. "This movie was very sincere. When you put a No. 2 after it, it's not sincere at all. It means you want to make money."

--From the Friday, February 11, 2005 online edition of the Augusta Chronicle