Le Concert

I watched this DVD on Saturday night. I actually had a two-for-one pass to the movie when it was screening at the cinema earlier in the year, which I didn’t get around to using (and which I thought was a shame) and so I’d filed it somewhere in my brain as a film to see on DVD one day. Then on Saturday morning I went to a fund-raising breakfast for some friends going to Nepal with Habitat for Humanity and one of the friends going is a movie reviewer who had russled up a whole pile of DVDs to auction. I’d had a look and not decided on any, but then my friend pulled out The Concert, which I’d not noticed, and said I might like it. I thought so too, and I bought it. So after doing my holiday Sunday School preparation I decided to watch it Saturday night (but it is two hours long, which is a little more than I’d planned on).

You do need to suspend a certain amount of disbelief for the plot, it’s a trifle overdone in places (not really what you expect from a French film), lags a little and gets muddled in others, and it has had mixed reviews (read this one for a good description), but all up I really enjoyed it. I couldn’t help but like the pathos and its motley bunch of ageing musicians reliving the dream. And it is worth watching just for the final scene (I’ve been replaying this!) which is essentially a performance of one movement from Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. Very stirring. It's a movie that is basically a good heart-warming tale, sprinkled with splendid music, with an uplifting ending. Good for some DVD cheer.