2. Characters
Clement Mathieu
• He´s a teacher who begins a chorus with
kids. He starts to fall in love with Pierre’s
mom.
Pepinot
• A small town boy, he is very shy but he
has a huge heart.
Le Querrec
• He is a boy with no talent in singing but
he always support his friends.
3. Mondain
•He is the tipical bad ass boy, he likes
to bother small kids and smoke a lot.
Pierre Morhange
• He´s voice is truly beautiful, he
thinks her mom doesn´t care about
him.
Violette Morhange
• She´s Pierre´s mom. She loves her
kid and worries about him.
4. Story
50 years after the main story takes
place, a man is shown conducting a
chorus. While conducting, he is
informed that his mother has died.
After the performance, he returns
home for the funeral. Soon, an old
friend called Pépinot arrives at his door
with a diary. It is the diary of their
teacher, Mathieu, and they read it
together.
In France in 1949, Clément
Mathieu, who in his own words has
failed at everything else, arrives at the
gates of Fond de l'Etang, a boarding
school for "difficult" boys. At the gate
he sees a young child, Pépinot, who is
waiting for Saturday, which is when his
father is supposed to come for him.
Pépinot had been told that his parents
were killed years previously in World
War II, but strangely, always believed
that his father would come back on a
Saturday.
5. In his first week at the school, Mathieu
discovers the boys being ruthlessly
punished by the headmaster Rachin.
Mathieu attempts to use humour and
kindness to win them over. When a
booby trap set by one of the boys, a
troublemaker named Le Querrec, injures
the school's elderly caretaker, Mathieu
keeps the boy's identity from the
headmaster, while encouraging the boy
to nurse the caretaker during his
recovery.
On discovering the boys singing rude
songs about him behind his back one
night, Mathieu, who is a musician and
composer, forms a plan - he will teach
them to sing, and form a choir. As he
groups the boys into sopranos etc., one
student, Morhange, refused to sing. He
caught Morhange singing to himself one
day and discovers that Morhange has a
wonderful singing voice. Mathieu awards
him solo parts on the condition that he
behave.
6. As Rachin goes to accept an award from the
board for "rescuing" the boys and reforming
them, Mathieu and the school's caretaker rebel
by taking the boys into the woods to enjoy the
sunshine. While they are out, Mondain returns
and sets fire to the roof.
Mathieu is fired for breaking the rules, even
though he saved the boys' lives. As he
leaves, the boys, who are forbidden to say
goodbye, throw messages to him on paper
planes out of the window. Touched, he waves
farewell.
Back in the present, the conductor, who has
been revealed to be Morhange, finishes reading
the diary and recounts what happened
afterwards. Morhange won his scholarship to the
conservatory, and the headmaster, Rachin, was
fired for his brutal discipline. Mathieu, Pépinot
relates, continued to give music lessons quietly
for the rest of his life.
The final scene shows Mathieu waiting for his
bus after being fired. As he boards the bus he
looks back and finds Pépinot running after
him, insisting that he come too. Initially Mathieu
refuses, saying that this is not allowed. But he
gives in and they board the bus together, and
we hear Mathieu narrating, saying that Pépinot
had got his dream, for Mathieu and he left on a
Saturday.
7. My coment about the movie..
Sometimes life make us
face some situations we
think is impossible to go
trough, but God wouldn’t
send us that situations if
he knew we couldn´t go
with them, so it´s a kind
of challenge to prove
ourselves how strong we
really are.
