"Ma Vie en Rose" ("My Life in Pink") A Film Review by Linda Lopez McAlister on "The Women's Show" WMNF-FM 88.5, Tampa, FL March 23, 1998 The other evening I was sitting in a restaurant having dinner when two women sat down in the next booth. I couldn't help overhear their conversation and one of them seemed mildly concerned about her younger son who is about four, I think, and the fact that the toy he wanted above all others was a Barbie doll. Finally, he talked his grandmother into buying him one and the mother who was relating this story to her friend claimed that it wasn't the fact that it was a Barbie he wanted that bothered her so much, but that the Barbie her mother had given him was not Dr. Barbie or Scientist Barbie, but Barbie in a pink chiffon dress. If that woman is listening to this broadcast, let me tell her "Go down to the Tampa Theater this week and see `Ma Vie en Rose." This is a charming French film about a little boy, Ludovic, who moves with his parents and three older siblings into a bourgeoise French suburban neighborhood where all the houses and all the minds pretty much conform to the same mold--can we call it "The French Dream?" Ludo, however, has different dreams and he longs to be like Pam, a fantasy t v character who lives in a fantasyland where one's dreams come true. Pam and her boyfriend Ben also come in doll versions that look very similar to Barbie and Ken, but it is Pam not Ben that Ludo dreams of becoming. At the backyard picnic housewarming party the new family throws, the father introduces his wife and children to the crowd of neighbors only to be completely flummoxed when Ludovic comes out of the house in a pink dress, red pumps, with makeup and earrings on and flowers in his long bobbed hair. His heart-rending explanation, "I only wanted to be pretty." While his parents tell themselves that this is just a phase that he ought to have grown out of by now, one of the new neighbors, Jerome, a boy in Ludo's class whose father happens to be Ludo's father's boss, has noted the goings on with interest. In school the next day during Show and Tell, Ludo brings his Pam and Ben dolls while Jerome brings a toy truck, however, the cargo it's carrying is one of the earrings Ludo had worn at the weekend party. That breaks the ice and they become friends. Shortly thereafter they are playing at Jerome's house and Ludo goes into Jerome's dead sister's room and is taken with the beauty of one of her dresses. In the next scene Ludo, wearing the dress, and Jerome are playing wedding and vowing their eternal love when Jerome's mother finds them an faints dead away. From then on in the film is a comedic look at a not so funny thing, the discomfort and bigotry and hatred of conventionally minded people toward those who do not stay within the rigidly defined boundaries of sexual and gender identity. Ludo struggles to figure out whether he is a girl or a boy. (His assumption was that he was a boy but would eventually become a girl). Jerome refuses to talk to him or sit with him because his parents have told him he'll fry in hell if he does. They think he's sick so they send him to a psychologist . The father blames the mother for treating him too much like the girl she really wanted. They try humoring him in the hopes that cross dressing will be less attractive to him once it's not forbidden. Kids beat him up at school while his older brothers stand by and let it happen. His parents are at one another's throat and the father insists that Ludo cut his long hair so he'll look more like a boy. His father tries to teach him to play soccer and spend more time with him "man to man." When his sister shows him what her biology book says about XX and XY chromosomes, Ludo thinks that God gave him the wron chromosomes and he'll fix his mistake eventually. When anti-gay graffiti is spray painted on their garage door and his father loses his job even his mother, who had been supportive of Ludo, turns against him. For all that, the film is a comedy because it's spoofing all this panic and fear and prejudice. And it has a happy ending that I won't spoil for you. It's filmed in vivid colors, especially the fantasy scenes, but others as well because the idyllic neighborhood in which the family first lives is, itself, a fantasy world. And you can't help feeling for Ludovic who is so innocent and confused and hurt by everybody's trying to get him to be how they want him to be instead of how he feels comfortable being. Alas, it's rated "R" though it contains no sex or violence. I guess the people who do the movie ratings don't want kids to hear the message that gender bending is fine if that's what you feel comfortable with. They want to perpetuate the bigotry that the film is trying in its sweet and funny way to subvert. How ironic. Copyright 1998 by Linda Lopez McAlister. All rights reserved. Please d not reprint or reproduce this list without the permission of the author. Linda Lopez McAlister, Chair||HMS 413 Department of Women's Studies||University of South Florida mcaliste@chuma.cas.usf.edu||Tampa, FL 33620 813-974-0982||||FAX: 813-974-0336 http://www.cas.usf.edu/womens_studies/mcalister.html