MA VIE EN ROSE (63)

Directed by: Alain Berliner

Starring: Georges du Fresne, Michele Laroque, Jean-Philippe Ecoffey

The Pitch: Seven-year-old Ludo is a little boy who wants to be a little girl. Parental consternation ensues.

Theo Sez: Oscar Wilde's famous dictum about two tragedies in life - not getting what you want, and getting it - made celluloid : having watched any number of well-meaning movies about the discrimination suffered by people who are "different" in some way, and having sighed impatiently as said films degenerated into preachiness and special pleading, we finally get a movie about nonconformism that's got charm, humour and not an ounce of moralism - and it's, er, a little disappointing. The look, as suggested by the title, is bright and colourful, the texture not too dissimilar to the childhood sequences in TOTO THE HERO - a sly, mildly surrealistic semi-satire of Belgian suburbia ; just not, somehow, a very memorable one. The problem is perhaps that Berliner has also suffered through all those tedious message movies, and is determined not to make one : our young hero is no martyr, nor are his parents particularly repressive - indeed the film's best joke is the way these rather bland suburbanites try to understand their son's bewildering habits, as if his craving were no more unusual (if incomprehensible) than a liking for Pantera. Everything is deliberately kept very innocent, somewhere between sitcom and fairytale - even the bigoted neighbours bow to the mood, making barely a dent in young Ludo's touchingly unshakeable self-belief. The result does manage to avoid the usual pitfalls, but it does so mostly by omission - it takes a whole different road, away from painful truths into quirky comedy, going where the risks are smaller. Unfortunately, so are the returns.