The Marching Band

Thibaut (Benjamin Lavernhe de la Comédie Française, The French Dispatch, My Donkey, My Lover and I) is a French man, and a successful conductor—of the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra, we learn later on—who spends a lot of time in Europe as a guest conductor, and happens to be in a Paris when he discovers he has leukemia. His baby sister nobly offers to donate her marrow, with one catch.

She's not actually his sister. 

And so, Thibaut discovers mid-life that he is adopted. He also discovers, he has a brother, Jimmy (Pierre Lottin, When Fall Is Coming), who is a match.

Brothers re-united, Thibaut cured, happy ending roll credits, right?

No! In fact, this is just the opening act, the inciting incident. Because Thibaut got adopted by a rich, childless family that had a surprise baby (the sister in question) while Jimmy stayed in his lower class surroundings. He went on to work in a factory, to serve cafeteria food at school, to get married have a child and be divorced and alienated, and to play trombone in a marching band.

The titular marching band in fact. (Although the original name is actually En Fanfare, which is French for "a fanfare".)

What follows is an exercise in nature vs. nurture, social classes, and evaluating what matters in life.

I liked it a great deal. The musical contrasts were both amusing and enlightening. The Boy liked it slightly less (he says) because he's not a musician.

What we both agreed we liked was all the things the movie didn't do. It didn't reach for clichés like Jimmy being miserable because of his class versus Thibaut. Thibaut's career is obviously a much higher strata—and Jimmy has perfect pitch that makes Thibaut think he can aim much higher with his music than he does—but he's also someone with well-wishers instead of actual friends. He's unmarried, unattached, and he's closest to his sister, Rose, who's the neurotic dummy that offered to donate her marrow knowing Thibaut was adopted.

His mother, of course, is indicted for not having adopted Jimmy, but even she has a point. Since they had given up hope of ever having a child, they adopted him—Jimmy was not born yet—and when Jimmy was born and his mother died, Rose had just come along. They didn't think they could handle it, and his mother seems to have anguished about it.

A lot of things happen as Thibaut discovers how much he has in common with Jimmy, and how much he wants to help him. First, he discovers that helping people isn't easy. Next, he discovers how much Jimmy is tied into a community that his being drained by the city's factory being relocated to Romania. This community is beaten down and has little will to fight or to change. Thibaut seems almost naïve at times.

There's a lot of failure here. But the failure doesn't win, because the people keep coming back stronger each time. 

It hardly feels French at all, and in this regard, that's a high compliment.