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Christophe Barratier’s tender coming-of-age tale offers a few twists on the tough-love formula of such classics as To Sir, with Love and Stand and Deliver. Here the instructor thrown into the task, Clément Mathieu (Gérard Jugnot), uses his love of music to reach out to the disenfranchised at a post-WW2 boys’ reform school tucked away in the French countryside. He’s the offset to the megalomaniac headmaster (François Berléand), who has delusions of grandeur and favors draconian disciplinary tactics yet allows Mathieu to "experiment" by forming a choir (thus the title). The predictable pitfalls are followed by emotional healing, yet Les choristes works, much of its success hanging on the poised performance by Jugnot, whose failed musician is also in need of redemption. In one telling moment, after a mercurial youth has rendered a bulbous caricature of Mathieu’s bald head on the board, Mathieu one-ups his assailant with a stroke of chalk, gaining credibility with the boys and the audience as well. In French with English subtitles. (97 minutes)
BY TOM MEEK
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