La Famille Bélier

Yesterday evening, I watched a charming little French film: La Famille Bélier. Teenage Paula lives on the family farm, a lovely old-fashioned place of mixed farming. The very first scene shows her helping with a calving (her father names the calf Obama). She’s a capable girl and she needs to be. Both her parents and her brother are deaf and she has to interpret for them, often tactfully toning down the very rude things her parents have signed. Then the school music teacher discovers that she has a good voice and wants her to audition for prestigious training in Paris. When she finally tells her parents this, her mother goes berserk (both parents are quite eccentric) and poor Paula is torn between love and duty and her own ambition. Add in some teenage angst and boy trouble and you have a film which is both funny and touching. It’s on Prime.

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