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The Marching Band review – tender French concert bromance gets out the trombones

Two strong leads in Pierre Lottin and Benjamin Lavernhe make this heart-on-sleeve but unsentimental class drama a triumph in a minor key French film-maker Emmanuel Courcol serves up a good-natured heartwarmer with some syrup, but also two watchable and robust lead performances. For British audiences, The Marching Band might call to mind Brassed Off, The Full Monty or Billy Elliot, movies from the heartland which dared to dream that showbusiness or cultural community adventures can somehow survive the wreckage of industrial capitalism.Benjamin Lavernhe plays Thibaut, a distinguished and sensitive orchestra conductor who collapses mid-rehearsal in Paris and is told he has leukaemia and needs a bone marrow transplant donor. Thibaut is adopted and this means tracking down his biological brother out in the boondocks: factory worker Jimmy, played by the formidable Pierre Lottin (recently seen in François Ozon’s When Autumn Falls), whose gift for deadpan comedy really only gets free rein a...


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