Sunday, May 5, 2013

[movie] Valérie Donzelli - La guerre est déclarée (Kinodvor)

It is a life-powers replenishing insight into a story of two young parents, confronted with the reality of their newborn son having a complex and persistent brain-tumor. A story that could not be told with so much vigour, wit or humorous shifts of moods, probably, if it had not been also partially a true story of the main two characters. While she (playing Juliette) is also the director and co-screenwright of the movie, he (playing Romeo) is a soundtrack selection assistant, the young boy Gabriel (the two actors' real son) is the inspiration for this movie, shown in the movie as Adam at 8 years of age (before that there is another child, aged around 2-3). But the real power of this movie sticks more in the fact that Weltvertrauen (as some holocaust survivors would have said), the strength of trust, belief, vital forces and, above all, taking things with a piece of joyful irony and distance, can solve even such an improbable and tragic fate. Being young, powerful and absolutely in love and then giving birth to a "defect" child could mean that god has played his worst cards, yet we are still playing. As for the philosophical point of view - kids like Gabriel would simply die in a few short years after birth without modern medicine, so all the struggles would have actually not been there, the story would not be plausible by any chance; and the music, of course, is another of the worse points of the movie, being too abundant in filling the scenes, but also being too illustrative or hyper-emotional-classic. Apart from that, the story bears enough metaphorical diversions to make you wonder some basic questions of family life or relationships between human beings completely anew - and not merely painfully, I must add.

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