La Famille Bélier ***
Dir: Eric Lartigau.
With: Karin Viard, Francois Damiens, Eric Elmosnino, Louane Emera. 106 mins.
Cert: 12A
From afar, French
director Eric Lartigau’s follow-up to 2010’s hit thriller The Big Picture looks perilously sappy: it’s a post-Glee tale of a musically gifted teen
(Louane Emera) torn between duty to her deaf dairy-farmer parents (Karin Viard
and Francois Damiens) and the show choir that might liberate her from
agricultural drudgery. In fact, Lartigau yields spirited, often funny material
from the predicament of a heroine obliged to obtain everything from cattle feed
to thrush cream for her folks, while constructing a most empathetic portrait of
deafness: consider Damiens’ mayoral bid, launched on the slogan “I Hear You”. A
canny cast earn any final-reel tears honestly: the ever-ebullient Viard proves
even more expressive without spoken dialogue, and erstwhile Gainsbourg Eric
Elmosnino lends wry support as the choirmaster. It wouldn’t work, though,
without the Julia Stiles-ish Emera’s solid-gold knockout performance: both
singing and signing, while describing a young woman overcoming understandable
reservations about allowing her voice to be heard.
La Famille Bélier opens in selected cinemas from today.
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