It has a good start, then it went slowly down for me, but it had a beautiful finale which is a very important thing. The ending is beautiful, it leaves you well and touches the heart. It is certainly a movie I’d recommend and watch again; even if there were pieces in the middle that made me mad, there were other moments that were funny or lovely.
The Bélier family consists of mother, father, son and a daughter, Paula (Louane Emera). Its peculiarity is that only Paula can speak, the others are deaf, so she helps them connect to the world. They have a farm, and she’s the one who speaks on the phone to the vet when necessary, translates when they go to their doctor, that keeps their affairs in order and sells their products at the market. They are different from other people in many ways: they are always cheerful and very direct, so much that Paula has to ‘interpret’ what they are saying when she translates for others :-p They are lovely in many ways, in how much they love each other for example, but also rather odd, so much in their own world that don’t think it weird in any way to shake Paula’s stained pants in front of her singing partner, lost in their joy that she’s growing up and ‘becoming a woman’. That was so embarrassing…
Things get complicated when she joins the choir course at school and her teacher spots her and convinces her she should try entering a school in Paris because she has a beautiful voice. She’s in a difficult position because of course she loves her family and she worries about what they’d do without her, but she also like the idea of going to Paris and sing.
She tries to hide it at first, takes private singing lessons with her teacher, and the desire to try it grows in her. Meanwhile her father has decided to run for mayor…
When she tells her family, it doesn’t go well, her parents feel like she’s betraying them, leaving them for the other world, and here came the worst bit of the film, when her mother told her that she hates hearing people.. which is a bad thing to say to a hearing person, specially if it’s your daughter, but of course she does not hate her daughter, she loves her but is hurt that she wishes to leave them… until the day of the school recital arrives. They attend as well, but of course can’t hear her sing. Still, they can see all the people there, deeply appreciating the song, tears in their eyes. A peculiar thing is that we always heard the same little bit of the song, never more of it, and during the recital we watched it as they watched it, in silence. This is because we’ll hear it later: that night, her father asks her to sing it for him, and he places his hand on her neck, and in a way that I can’t describe it’s touching, and he understood. Early in the morning he wakes everyone up and drives them all to Paris, just in time for the audition. She sings another song, she sings Je Vole, she sings “mes chers parents je pars, je vous aime mais je pars” and “je ne m’enfuis pa je vole, comoprenez bien je vole” which means my dear parents I’m leaving, I love you but I’m leaving, I’m not running away, I’m flying, understand well I’m flying .
It’s a beautiful scene because while she sings she translates for her family in the sign language, so they can understand… it’s really a beautiful scene. They understand that she loves them but simply wants to follow her own path, meet her own future, and let her go.
ITA la famiglia Bélier
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