Mes frères, et moi is a raw-realistic fairy tale about how art can save your life ★★★★☆

It seems like an excuse not to have to paint further on the deserted school building. But it actually goes much deeper, in the successful French coming-of-age drama Mes frères, et moi: 14-year-old Nour interrupts his summer community service because he is actually touched by the sounds that flow towards him from the music room. Nour’s sick, comatose mother, while still conscious, was very fond of Italian opera. An aria like Una furtiva lagrima from Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, mom’s favorite, Nour can literally sing along. If only he gets the chance.

So it’s great that Nour (Maël Rouin Berrandou) ends up in the class of opera singer Sarah (Judith Chemla). Sarah has traveled to Nour’s southern French port town to provide some cultural education during the summer holidays. She immediately sees something in the elusive but curious boy, and encourages him to join her classes.

The brightly decorated, brightly lit classroom is presented by the French filmmaker Yohan Manca as a real oasis. A place to unwind, opposite the decrepit, junk-filled apartment where Nour lives with his adult brothers Abel (Dali Benssalah), Mo (Sofian Khammes) and Hedi (Moncef Farfar), and their dying mother on a ventilator . Constantly hounded at home, Nour can let Sarah’s music sway along. Little by little she wakes up his voice, in scenes that rely fully on the fresh chemistry between Chemla and natural talent Rouin Berrandou.

How art can save your life, is how Manca himself formulated the theme of his feature film debut, which he freely based on the play Pourquoi mes frères et moi on est parti… by Hédi Tillette de Clermont-Tonnerre. You could also call it a film about finding and appropriating breathing space. Manca perfectly conveys the stifling relationship between the brothers, and how necessary it is for Nour to escape that dynamic. At the same time, you also feel how much he, Abel and Mo – unlike black sheep Hedi – long to stay together as a family.

Manca gives this story something universal and timeless, for example by leaving cell phones and social media out of the picture. The camera work of Marco Graziaplena, shot by hand in the saturated colors of 16mm film stock, soaks up the sultry summer atmosphere of the unnamed town completely. The end result is a compelling, raw-realistic fairy tale that cleverly keeps itself in check: the border of the believable is rarely crossed, and yet you can believe that anything is possible for Nour.