On screen in France since March, the film co-written by Barratier and Philippe Lopes-Curval suffers no lack of drama in a taut plot, where Clément's humanist principles encounter many obstacles. When headmaster Rachin (François Berléand) acts on his initial misgivings about the whole absurd enterprise of trying to bring a team spirit and a shared passion to lost adolescent misfits for whom he has no love but a sliding scale of contempt, the chorale becomes an explicit act of resistance and Clément discovers some unexpected allies.
The language of music infuses the narrative and some formidable camera and lighting work ranging from abrupt allegro to seamless successions of broad-measured slow movements with a faultless coherence.
To shoot successful winter scenes in last summer's heat wave must have been tough enough for all involved, but such skilled visual mastery of a transition from metronome monotony to a summer coda is more remarkable still.
Jugnot and others, including Berléand as erratically obsequious bully, bring some highly comic, often wordless gracenotes to the unfolding of the story. Which, all told, is one vast flashback. A flashback in Morhange's memory, where he comes to recognise his lifelong career as the repayment of a debt to a hero unsung for decades. A man for whom music, like his compassion, was one of the fruits of love.

It's been a long while since I've watched and listened to a story where when the final credits had rolled, I felt quite ready to see the film and hear more all over again. At once.
I couldn't. But I shall and 'Les Choristes' — particularly as a writer-director's first — takes an easy 8.5/10. A major box-office success at home, this is a movie worthy of international attention.