Ingeniously incorporating a standard arc of a teen's rite-of-passage (a girl gifted to be a potential songbird) into a rural deaf family, French moviemaker Eric Lartigau's THE BÉLIER FAMILY is a genuine box office champ and heartwarming divertissement.
Our corn-fed protagonist is Paula Bélier (Emera), a high school student and the only hearing person in her family, both her parents and brother Quentin (Gelberg, a real deaf actor) are born deaf, so naturally Paula also acts as their interpreter on a daily basis, particularly in their cheese vending stall.
Following Gabriel (Bergala), her crush in the school, Paula joins the school's choir and is discovered by the music teacher M. Thomasson (Elmosnino, smacks of Gallic cynicism but at large, more than qualified as a dutiful instructor), that she is endowed with the timbre of a veritable soprano, whereupon he encourages her to partake in an audition for a prestige music college in Paris, an opportunity naturally clashes with her parents' hope that she can stay in the Lassay-les-Châteaux commune to help with the farm business, not to mention her father Rodolphe (Damiens) is campaigning for the mayorship, if Barack Obama can become POTUS, why a deaf farmer cannot be elected a mayor? Who can argue with that?
On the one hand, Paula's pedestrian life of school, singing training, budding romance and earnest friendship rides on a familiar narrative trajectory with an engaging tempo (though her first period incident risks to be too crude); on the other hand, her family's unique “deafness” is deftly exploited to elicit many surprising responses, such as the heart-felt confession that “being deaf is an advantage!” from Paula's mother Gigi (Viard); the tactful foley arrangement offering a deaf person's perspective of “listening” and Rodolphe's tender touch of feeling her vocal chord when Paula belts out; to say nothing of the killer finale, when Paula simultaneously sings and gestures Michel Sardou's JE VOLE in the audition, that is magically tearjerking and uplifting at the same time.
Stellar debut performance from chanteuse Emera (a semi-finalist in the second season of THE VOICE, France and now a sensational pop star), who also manages to get a hang of sign language, so are two headlining stars, both Viard and Damiens are incredible in enacting deaf personae, not merely by memorizing the gestures, but also lend themselves to the expressive and distinctive manner how a deaf person “speaks” with the whole body language, truly wonderful!
referential entries: Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano's THE INTOUCHABLES (2011, 7.7/10); Randa Haines' CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD (1986, 6.4/10).
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