Rémi sans famille

Writer and sometimes movie director Hector Marlot's SANS FAMILLE has a following among generations of young readers who grew up with it. It seems to inspire a film version every decade, including a silent made by the author.

I hadn't previously encountered it myself and it reaches me as something from the class end of the Kid Film Spectrum, with the handsome surface of current costume adventure films like LES TROIS MOUSKETEERS - here scaled down.

The plausibly ten year old hero is an orphan whose rural travels bring him into the care of Itinerant musician Dan Auteuil, with his pet monkey and particularly winning dog. Rather than stay as a companion to grow into servant for the ill girl on the nice river barge, the boy sets out to find his real mother, encountering angry wolves and menacing fraudsters in a derelict town house from which he must be saved. Mix in a bit of Dickens and Stevenson.

The makers find room for assured players like Valerie Ledoyen and Jacques Perin matched by equally effective unknowns. Grand parents with conservative taste will feel they've done the right thing showing this one to children dumped in their care.

The main actor performs excellently and the music is perfect. The film has pruned some parts of the former plot in order not to make it too long (I guess) though it is a good one to see.

It tells you to never lose hope. Even in the darkest hours of your life, when you feel there's none. Because you'll never know what's in store for you in the future.

And if you are determined to learn something, you will learn it little by little til it grows big. Especially when you have the purpose why you wanna learn. In Remi's case, he wanted to learn the alphabet so that he could know how to assemble the letters in words and in sentence. So that he could write letters to her mom Barbaran.

Life is like a Ferris wheel. It keeps spinning and spinning. You could be the next on top. Just keep moving.

This rewrite of the famous French novel is very touching, very well directed and filmed. It will definitely appeal to all who grew up with the eponymous series. Great acting by Daniel Auteuil and Maleaume Paquin in particular. The addition of an "after story" with an older Rémi is also an interesting one. We highly recommend it, including with kids.

I got to watch this movie because my father and brother love the novel, i myself have never read it. Knowing almost nothing about the plot, after the film finished I felt unsatisfy because even though this film has all the material needed to become a classic: great acting, good music, great original plot from the novel,... but it missed the struggle needed to make us feel for Remi (the main character). Basically in his status he should have had an excruciating hard life but instead in this movie almost every people loved him and treat him kind and protect him, he never actually has to do anything on his own to survive and in the end he still get happily rewarded. So that really make me feel unsatisfy because the movie could have been so much better. Thank you for reading until the end, forgive me if there are mistakes in this review because I'm not a native English user.