Faubourg 36

Rating

: * * *

Verdict

:

They don't make movies like this anymore.

Similar in tone, though not in budget, to Baz Luhrmann's

Moulin Rouge

, this very French confection is an entertainment so unabashedly old-fashioned that you almost expect cigarette girls to wander down the aisle during the second reel.

It's easy to dismiss it as an extended assemblage of cliches but that rather misses the point: its evocation of time and place is deliberately stylised. Complaining that it is artificial is rather like accusing Noel Coward of being too talky. Indeed the film is less cinematic than it is theatrical and that's apt when the subject matter is the on- and off-stage life of a vaudeville troupe.

The number in the title locates the story in pre-war Paris: a Popular Front government has just been elected and the social struggle is between emboldened trade unionists and emergent fascists. But the real drama is backstage at the Chansonia, a suburban music hall where Pigoil (Jugnot) is the lighting whizz and the stalwart of the resident company.

His personal troubles - his wife runs off with another man and then returns to take his beloved son Jojo (Perrin) far away - are interwoven with the company's fortunes, as the theatre is repeatedly rescued from death's door. With extravagant use of bold tracking shots - the cinematographer is Tom Stern who shot Eastwood's later films - the camera roves through the wings and dressing rooms and the cafes and factories of the neighbourhood.

The storyline is involved but never hard to follow and the characters are straight out of central casting: an evil mobster (Donnadieu) with his lascivious eye on the lustrous soprano (Arnezeder); a lovably incompetent comedian (Merad, from

The Valet

); and a broodingly handsome agitator (Cornillac). You may feel like sighing and hissing at appropriate moments.

Jugnot (a noted French comedian who played the lead role in schooldays drama

The Choir

for the same director a few years back) makes a fine anchor for the uniformly talented ensemble.

It's definitely made for song-and-dance fans but it's a deliciously whimsical piece of Gallic escapism.

Peter Calder

Cast

: Gerard Jugnot, Clovis Cornillac, Kad Merad, Nora Arnezeder, Maxence Perrin, Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu.

Director

: Christophe Barratier

Running time

: 120 mins

Rating

: M (low-level violence)

In French with English subtitles