The Music Teacher

In Brief: As impossible as it is not to get the feeling that this nice looking Belgian film was written in an effort to showcase the music it contains, it’s equally impossible not to become at least a little swept up in its decidedly “feel good” story about old musical rivals squaring off through their protégés at a musical competition. Similarly, if you’re a music lover, it’s hard not to respond to the film’s doses of Mahler, Mozart, Schumann, Puccini, Bellini and Verdi. In that regard, Gérard Corbiau’s The Music Teacher (1988) is a delight. It’s a well made, entertaining work, but it never quite gets away from the sense that it’s a bit of a “culture vulture” version of the traditional uplifting sports movie. The difference being, of course, that instead of the sport-of-choice, it’s singing that’s at issue. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that—personally, I’d rather hear someone sing Mahler than watch someone play football—but it does lend a certain predictability to the film once you realize that it’s an old formula in an unusual guise. This excerpt was taken from a review by Ken Hanke originally published on Sept. 5, 2007.