Les Choristes [The Choir]

Jay got his PR last week, one step closer to becoming an Australia so we decided to go out and celebrate. As planned to go dinner at Yardhouse which is pretty close to my place and then movie at Orpheum. The meal at Yardhouse was so so, well at least my Thai Chicken Skew was, bit tasteless and the chicken half cooked. Dave and Pete ordered some Beef stewed in Dark Beer which I had a taste which was pretty good. Then we drove straight to Neutral Bay Orpheum and found there was already a long queue of crowd getting tickets! We all decided to go and see Sideways but by the time we got to the counter is already sold out. And trying to make a quick decision what other movie we can see without holding up the queue, I just quickly picked "Les Choristes", another film in my wishlist. Or I could have chosen "Motorcycle Diaries" just to pisss Dave off cuz he is anti-notorious people flick, funny.

The movie is set in 1949, a new teacher has just assigned to teach at Fond-de-L'Etang boarding school at the countryside of France where "Action-Reaction!" is the motto of the school on how to teach the student a lesson when they did something wrong. Slowly, the new teacher discovered there is a passion of music in the students' heart and started forming the students into a group of talented choir, especially the soloist, Pierre Morhange, who can sing like a nightingale. When he sang, I can feel the whole cinema gone quiet and admiring the kid's singing. Ok, this all might sound like "Sister Act 2", but I swear there is nothing cheesy like having a black woman with a big fro disguising as a nun and teach a bunch of school kids Gospel. The soundtrack in the movie is so beautiful that you don't even have to understand French to feel the rhythm.

The story line probably bit too close to other music movies like "Sister Act 2", "Mr Holland Opus" etc, to reform a bunch of schoolboys through music and changed their live but foreign films always have a better style of story telling to make the movie 10 times better. Although some people hated it so much which I don't understand. [derived from SMH] All the little details in the movie, different schoolboys with different story to tell makes the movie more enjoyable. Apart from Morhange, the talented soloist in the movie who took the whole show, Pepinot, a 10yo kid who really stole my sympathy towards him. Pepinot will always wait at the front gate every Saturday, for his parents to arrive to pick him up and bring him home, and of course the parents who already passed away during war time would never come. Seeing the strong message of hope within a 10yo kid is powering, and seeing him accepting the fact and ran away from school to be with the teacher is very emotional, I think alot of people in the cinema cried. Overall, love it, love it, love it!! There is something about foreign film with Orphanage, or kids, set in old time, you can never go wrong with it. From Kolya, El Espinazo del diablo [The Devil's Backbone], and now Les Choristes, they are all my favorites. I've been downloading all the tracks from the movie and enjoying every single piece. I highly recommend it.


Story :

Popcorn Level :

TOTAL : 9.0/10