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Ma Vie En Rose

Ma Vie En Rose

List Price: $27.95
Your Price: $22.36
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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Happy Seven Year Old Boy in Pink...
Review: Ludovic is a happy seven year old boy. He likes to dress in skirts, play with dolls like the girls at his age, and he dreams of marrying the neighbor's son when he gets old. These are things that the neighbors see as evil and it does not help that his father is working for the man across the street. The neighbor's negative feelings, phobia, and discomfort of Ludovic's behavior causes a series of events that is the beginning for a long ritual of freezing the family out of the neighborhood. This also triggers a gender identity crisis within Ludovic. My Life in Pink is a wonderful and painful film where the audience can experience Ludovic's shame of self existence, however, the film can help build a deeper understanding for others.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A small gem
Review: A heartwarming comedy. The story of a boy age 7, who is confused as to whether he is a boy or a girl. He has a penchant for wearing his sister's dresses and playing with dolls. The boy, played by George Du Fresne is very endearing and radiates innocence, which remains despite hostility towards him from other members of his community due to his unusual dressing habits. The film has a similar type of charm to another French film 'Amelie', The lead characters in both films are quintessentially good and kind. Hollywood rarely, if ever makes films like this. When attempts are made they usually fall into the trap of too much sentimentality, too little understanding of the outsider, the oddball and the quirky.

The film is subtitled, but there is something poetic about the French language and the viewer assimilates the background dialogue as if by osmosis. In fact I could probably watch this without subtitles, despite understanding very little French, simply because the scenes and characters are so visually captivating. The film is topical as well, with the rise of the far right in France comparable to the bigotry that the main character faces from his community, due to their strict conservative values.

( review by Melchizedeck )

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: a spectacular french film
Review: An incredible drama with funnies situations in a very colorfull presentation. The story of a normal family with a huge problem of having their little kid with a very diferent personality. I loved this film, trust me, it wont disappoint you.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Charming, Touching & Surprisingly Subversive
Review: The most obvious way to read MA VIE EN ROSE is as the tale of difficulties faces by a very young boy who is very likely transgendered--but given the multilayered nature of the film this is actually a rather narrow point of view. It would be more accurate to describe the film as a rather sly assault on a cookie-cutter society that reacts with a herd mentality toward anything in the least unusual. And Ludovic Fabre is a most unusual child: barely into school, he has become convinced that he is really a girl, and in his childhood innocence he sees absolutely nothing socially amiss with the idea.

The film begins with a party at which neighbors gather to welcome the newly arrived Fabre family--only to be, along with the family, extremely disconcerted when Ludovic makes an entrance in meticulously applied make-up and a pink dress. His family passes the incident off as a joke, but Ludovic proves remarkably single-minded, and when he draws a neighborhood child into his fantasies he also incurs neighborhood hysteria. The result is at once comic and unpleasantly vicious as his classmates, his neighbors, and eventually his family gradually turn upon him.

Although there are one or two problems with character development in the script, the cast--particularly Georges du Fresne as Ludovic and Helene Vincent as free-spirit grandmother Elizabeth--is superlative, and director Alain Berliner balances the serio-comic story with a very light touch. Viewers will laugh a little, cry a little, and ultimately come away from the film feeling an uncertain hope. The fact that this film is rated "R" is merely so much more evidence of the power of the herd to dictate standards of normalicy--one or two profanities aside, there is absolutely nothing in the film to offend any intelligent viewer, and the film will hold a special appeal for older children who have been targeted as in any way different by their peers... and for the many adults who remember what it was like to be a victim of a society that prizes conformity over imagination, creativity, honesty, integrity, and self-awareness. Strongly recommended.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great film
Review: I loved this movie! We were watching it at a friend's house, great music too! I wanna look for the soundtrack, if there is one. It was sad at times but overall a great piece of work!!!

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Lovely, lovely, lovely
Review: A well thought and beautifully told story of transgenderism. A must for the transgendered and their families. At last, a story about sexual identity that isn't a comedy or a violent tragedy. This one is it! Do not look for something this delicate, beautiful and heartwrenching from American filmmakers, it will never see the light of day.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A beautiful, all-consuming movie
Review: Never heard of this movie? Wonder what it's all about, and why it is consistently getting 5 stars from nearly 60 customer reviews?

A wonderfu, wonderful move - my favourite of all time. Whilst it deals with what could be shrugged off as a 'gay agenda', it is sensitive, and will not leave the more conservative viewers squirming in their seat.

Please see this movie - educate yourselves. I have sat through this movie 5 times, enthralled more and more every time. This is what I call a viral movie - the sort that you are so impressed by, that you not only recommend it to a friend - you make sure you sit down and watch it with them - you want to see how it affects them, and from personal experience, everyone who saw it felt a mixture of joy and sadness, and went on to watch it with friends of theirs.

An amazing performance by Georges Du Fresnes, who plays little Ludovic that will leave you questioning what exactly makes a great actor great.

See it! Or else! :)

PS - To the Sydney based girl who thought this movie was garbage, it sounds to me like you never even saw the movie. Don't waste people's time listening to your useless comments.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The only film I know of not to show TG people as freaks
Review: To give an idea of what effect this film had on me, I was willing to break my long-standing rule of never sitting through a subtitled film. (If I wanted to read, after all, I would have bought a book). But "Ma Vie En Rose" was the rare exception.

One is first struck by how different it is from films with a similar theme (such as "Priscilla" and "To Wong Foo....")The aforementioned films portray transsexuals and transvestites as occupying the fringe of society, and the lunatic fringe at that. Ludo is a sweet, carefree, innocent child whose conviction that he is a girl is every bit as innocent. Ludo could be your neighbor's child--or yours.

Paradoxically, the film shows how far we've come (can you imagine a film like this being made ten years earlier?) and how far we have yet to go. Ludo gets the expected hassling from schoolmates, but their reaction is nothing compared to that of the adults in the neighborhood--a clear indication of where the children get their prejudices in the first place. One gets the impression Ludo's parents (the mother, anyway--the father seems too weak and ineffectual to have an opinion) really want his happiness and will accept him whatever he turns out to be--whether gay or transsexual. When the mother, her patience exhausted, finally cuts Ludo's long hair, it is done not out of contempt for Ludo but the weariness that the furor around him has caused.

The film's highlights have to be the extended fantasy sequences taking place in Ludo's mind, a world of Barbie-like dolls, in a cosmos where X chromosomes tossed by a careless Creator end up in the trash. It does tend to fall back on stereotypes (the strong mother/weak father myth) but is a greater plea for understanding that a hundred books on the subject.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The sweetest movie...
Review: I was a bit stunned to see this movie rated R, in the same way I was upset "Billy Elliot" was rated R. "My Life in Pink" is a sweet story of 7-year old Ludo's struggles to become a girl and the intolerance of a town who refuses to accept anyone as different as he is. There is nothing sexual in this movie and it is not about whether or not little Ludo is, as the town suggests, a "bent boy". The film is honest and compelling... it deserved every award it has received. A MUST-SEE.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: It Is Suitable For Minors
Review: I agree with the United States reviewer above. The US rating for this movie is over the top. Here in the UK it only gets a 12 - in other words suitable for children over that age. In fact Ma Vie En Rose was shown on UK TV just the other night - but why after midnight I wonder? Are people nowadays still sensitive about the issues explored in this charmingly tasteful movie? I don't think so.

It's all about a dear little boy who wants to be a girl and wear skirts, yet he is given such a hard time by the adults. They send him to a child psychologist and make his life really difficult. Yet he is still a child. In the end he meets a little girl who maybe wants to go the other way and it all ends happily ever after.

Well, that's what we are led to believe. Like most French movies, it's kind of left hanging up there, you know - but that's why we love them I guess.

Definitely one for your movie collection. I can strongly recommend it - particularly as it challeneges in a serious though amusing way our preconceptions about how we should treat children in their formative years.


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