In La Traviata, My Brothers and I which was shown at the Un Certain Regard section at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, writer-director Yohan Manca tells a coming of age story of the 15 year old Nour (Mael Rouin-Berrandou), the youngest son of Algerian immigrant parents during one summer in a seaside town in southern France. Nour lives with his three brothers: Abel the oldest is selling illegal replica football shirts, Mo is a gigolo hustling among vacationing rich old ladies and Hedi is involved with drug pushers and is the black sheep of the family. Against all advice, including their uncle, they care for their comatose mother at home, instead of putting her in hospital. As Abel explains to his mother’s brother: “mother wanted to live and die with her children”.
Nour loves to listen to opera, particularly Verdi’s La Traviata, which annoys his brothers to no end. According to Nour, his father used to sing arias from this opera to their mother. Nour hopes that by singing La Traviata to his mum, she might come out of her coma.
As a result of helping out his brothers, specially Hedi, Nour has to do community service. His chore is to paint the walls of his school. While painting he hears operatic music from one of the rooms. He sees that a music teacher named Sara (Judith Chemla) is teaching a few girls to sing operatic arias. Nour loves to join the class and Sara is keen to have him but Nour’s community service duties and Abel’s insistence that Nour should find a summer job instead, provide obstacles and the movie’s main dramatic element.
Yohan Manca has tried to cram a number of themes in his film: a coming of age story, a boy’s love and affection for opera, the ghetto lives of immigrants in France. With so many themes, none is given sufficient time and space to make its mark and resonate with the audience. We have very little background about the brothers to have much empathy with them. There have been many movies with a coming of age story and also many films about the lives of immigrants, and those forced into crime. This film’s unique angle is the young boy’s affection for opera. I believe that if Manca had focused on the boy’s love for opera, given us more background about his father and why he sang opera to his wife and the developed further the emotional bond between Nour and his mother and also between Nour and Sara, who is like a surrogate mother to him, the film would have delivered a much stronger emotional punch.
As it is, La Traviata, My Brothers and I is very entertaining with fine performances, specially by Mael Rouin-Berrandou and Judith Chemla, who are given double duties of acting and singing and do a fine job of both. Manca’s use of music is particularly effective, both Algerian Rai music and excerpts from La Traviata. The film is bound to add new devotees to opera, specially La Traviata.
Grade: B+
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