If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Yes, this is a movie for opera lovers. Yes, maybe other persons will be bored. But, anyway, IT IS A REAL JEWEL. Excellent music, lovely photographed scenes, charming performances... From the beginning to the end, this film deserves an undoubted adjective: BEAUTIFUL. José Van Dam is an excellent bass-baritone and one of the wold's most famous singer. Although his students (Anne Roussel as Sophie Maurier and Philippe Volter as Jean Nilson) had small timing faults during their performance in Sempre libera, whose voices were doubled by Dinah Bryant, soprano, and Jerome Pruett, tenor, their acting are so tender that you can forgive these minor troubles. The last Dallayrac scene is delicate, sublime and superb. A Gerard Corbiau masterpiece, indeed. I haven't seen Pelle, the conqueror yet, but it should be something, because Pelle defeated Le maitre de musique and Almodovar's masterpiece: Womans in the verge of a nervous breakdown and won the Oscar for a foreing language movie in 1989.

As a dark horse, this Belgian film surprisingly got an Oscar nomination for BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM in 2009, directed by Gerard Corbiau, whom maybe we feel more familiar with for his later work FARINELLI (1994), another music-related opus, with a more dramatic pathos within. Ominously the music itself steals the thunder of the film per se, which leaves it in an awkward position, where only genuine opera lovers could rigorously indulge themselves with it while for laypeople like me, the waning correlation is unavoidable and discouraging. The film stars a real maestro José van Dam (the celebrated Belgian bass-baritone) as a singer, who is compelled to retire in his middle-age by his arch enemy, the Duke, with the help of his loyal wife, he trains two disciples and finally get his vengeance over the Duke. However Mr. van Dam's stiff performance could not be excused as a stark novice stage-fright; two young leads Anne Roussel and Philippe Volter also fail to be impressive apart from their singing parts. By contrast, only Sylvie Fennec and Patrick Bauchau deliver some sincere acting skills without too much superficial showing-off. The setting, costume and all its delicate props are in their right places to exude a bourgeois sentiment which casually goes well with the film's uneventful narrative. The final showdown is a fleeting opera duel between two respective disciples from the maestro and the Duke. The mask tableau is a major attraction, too bad it just ends like that, without too much aftertaste. After all, one cannot complain more about this film as long as music save us all from this molecularly mundane world.

First off, I love this movie. It is a very true testament to the level of competition inherent in the opera world, or in any performance art. Most people don't understand how hard some teachers can push their students, and it can lead to the ruining of the student's voice. I've seen it many times.If you didn't notice, both Arcas and Jean sounded very similar - this is because they were played by the same man, M. Jérôme Pruett. He was at the height of his European career at the time. I am currently one of his voice students at the Hartt School in CT, where he is resident faculty.

This film, one of my favorites of all-time, follows a retired opera star, (played by the real-life opera singer, Jose van Dam) and two pupils he agrees to teach after his retirement. When his two pupils must compete against their teacher's arch nemesis Prince Scotti (delectably played by Patrick Bauchau) and his dippy protege Arcas, it immediately becomes a feel-good movie. With gorgeous cinematography, well-written dialogue and the acting capabilities of Anne Roussel and Philippe Volter to carry the show, you don't need to rely on the beautiful music in both the background and the forefront of the story. You don't need to be a die-hard opera nut like myself to enjoy this film, you just need to be able to tolerate a lovely romance set against a stunning backdrop, where the bad guys can only be fought with musical notes. Go see it and tell me what you think.