10-year-old Oscar overhears Prof. Dusseldorf (Max von Sydow) telling his parents that he is dying. He wants to talk to only the dirty-mouth lady in pink, Rose. She was at the hospital selling pizzas in her uniform claiming to be a lady wrestler. Dusseldorf offers to buy her pizzas if she visits him everyday. The opinionated Rose is not comfortable with hospitals or a dying kid but she tells him wrestling tall tales. She convinces him to write letters to God and releases them tied to a balloon. The other kids in the hospital include Popcorn, Einstein, Bacon, China Girl, and his crush Peggy Blue who is blue from her sickness.This is simply a deliberate tear-jerker. There isn't anything wrong with that but this is solely a dying kid movie. First of all, I would change the pizza thing. I have never heard of somebody trying to sell pizzas quite that way. Believability is not necessarily top priority but Rose should be doing something that actually exists. There are some cool ideas but the story lacks tension because the ending is not in doubt. It could be nice to add a wrestling match for the kids or make costumes for them. This movie has a precious premise and delivers the expected jears.

I happened to see Danielle Darrieux play in this on the Paris stage and it was a one-woman show so clearly writer-helmer Schmitt has 'opened it out' as they say. Danielle Darrieux was born in 1917, Michelle Laroque in 1960 so clearly age wasn't an issue and I have no quarrel with Laroque in the role as she is an actress I admire immensely whom I have never seen give a bad performance and she is certainly at ease working with kids as she demonstrated in Malabar Princess. Here she deftly removes the tw out of twee and plays a no-nonsense pizza maker who forms at attachment to a terminally ill boy and instead of sugar-coating his condition she gets him to agree that each of his few remaining days will represent a whole decade so that he will, in theory, live close to a normal span, and persuades him also to write letters to God. As his parents are non-believers and feel unable to discuss his condition with him this has a touch of the Falstaff-as-surrogate-father-to-Prince-Hal about it. I have had mixed feelings about Schmitt since I saw - in another Paris theatre - his translation/adaption of Coward's Private Lives, in which he gave equal weight to all four principal actors whereas Coward had written two leads and two thankless roles as stooges, but Oscar is an enjoyable film.

The story is very simple: a boy is dying in consequence of a cancer, in a hospital for ill children. He has only a dozen of days left to live. At the beginning of the story, he doesn't speak to anybody, including his parents and the hospital personnel. He meets a woman who delivers pizzas ordered by the hospital personnel. This encounter will change the lives of the boy and the woman. The sense of humanity of Both will grow very much thanks to this connection. She succeeds to make the boy live a life time in twelve days. She succeeds also to open her own heart to many aspects of human existence. The story is very sensitive, and the actors very convincing, specially Oscar, Laroque, and Von Sydow. The result is a film which deserves to be seen, particularly by people who use to weep when they watch touching stories.

Saw this at a screening in Toulouse yesterday, before the national release, with writer/director Schmitt present afterwards to answer the audience's questions and talk about the film. I haven't seen his first feature, ODETTE TOULEMONDE, nor have I read any of his books and I went to Oscar ET LA DAME ROSE mostly intrigued by the presence of Max Von Sydow, one of cinema's best actors, and a welcome return to film scoring by great composer/musician Michel Legrand. I was fortunate enough to ask Schmitt about both Von Sydow and Legrand. Schmitt said Legrand has been a friend of his and a fan of the book for years (OSCAR was a play, then a novel, now a film) so it was he who told Schmitt he wanted to score the movie. The music is wonderful and has an important place in the picture (75 minutes were recorded and used). Its "fairy tale" quality at times evokes the scores for the films of Jacques Demy. As to the film, it's competently helm-ed, although no masterpiece. You cannot help but be moved to tears by the story (tackling the touchy subject of the illness and death of a child) and the performance of young actor Amir. Michèle Laroque was an obvious choice for the role, hers is a character of many flaws every spectator can relate to, and the role allows her to switch from comedy (mostly) to drama (a bit). Max Von Sydow is wonderful as he always is, although at 80 maybe a bit old to play a working doctor in a children's hospital... (He seems to also play a doctor in Scorsese's forthcoming SHUTTER ISLAND, and in truth has played other doctors throughout his career, like in AWAKENING for example). Von Sydow speaks his part in French (he has both French and Swedish nationalities), and Schmitt said he also wanted to be part of the project because he had read and liked his books. His role as Dr. Dusseldorf is quite important, not merely in the background, which was a pleasant surprise: his dignified, tall, authoritative presence is always a plus. (Well, in all honesty I was baffled at a scene in which a catch fighter BURPS at his face... certainly an unusual setting for Max! but these scenes are relevant to the film and their "bad taste" quality is intentional). All in all, while certainly not a masterpiece of the seventh art, the film has enough interesting threads to recommend it. The subject is tackled in a fitting way, alternating between a world of make-believe and a very adult and even spiritual take on life, illness and death. The depiction of childhood's concerns is the best part of it. All very philosophical (Schmitt is a former philosopher), yet made accessible to everyone. There are worse ways to spend an evening.