Ma Vie en Rose Reviews

The look may be pure cotton candy, but there's no gooey center here: Belgian director Alain Berliner's frank treatment of childhood sexuality and his wry critique of gender roles make this unusual comedy-drama one of the most radical films of the year. Ludovic (Georges Du Fresne) may only be 7 years old, but he's absolutely sure of one thing: Inside his little boy's body, he's really a little girl. It seems God made a terrible mistake when He was dishing out the chromosomes, and as soon as he grows up, "Ludo" plans to become a woman and marry Jerome (Julien Riviere), the boy next door. But what seem to Ludo the most natural things in the world -- playing with dolls, dressing up as a princess, stealing a kiss from Jerome -- are perceived as serious threats to the suburban community at large. As his bewildered parents (Michele Laroque and Jean-Philippe Ecoffey) cut his hair, force him to play sports and cart him off to a well-intentioned analyst (Marie Bunel), Ludo's innocent certainty about himself becomes tragically undermined by the fearful prejudices of nearly everyone around him. Rarely has the taboo subject of preadolescent sexuality been dealt with so directly, but Berliner's real target here is the destructive way our culture builds its grownups. Even in his happiest dreams, Ludo is already a victim to stringent gender roles: His fondest wish is to live in the saccharine, candy-colored world of Pam, a Belgian Barbie-type doll whose blonde hair, fat-free body and tangerine slacks represent a ridiculous ideal to which the majority of adult women in the film continue to aspire. The film is a pretty bitter pill, but the canny Berliner rolls it in sugar and wraps it up in cellophane, the better to make the medicine go down.