User Reviews

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.

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.

"Oscar et la dame rose" is the third chapter of Cycle de l'Invisible by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt. I have read four books in the series and I can say that Oscar and the Lady in Pink is by the far the sweetest book among them. Oscar is a boy of ten. He is terminally ill. One day he overhears his parents' talking to his doctor and he realizes that he will die very soon. Oscar (Amir) thinks his parents are two wackos,with no conversation ever since he has been sick. He misses the time when they could say "I love you" without sorrow. So, he refuses to talk to anyone except the lady in pink (Michèle Laroque)who claims to be a former wrestler.The dialog between the former female wrestler and Oscar becomes so tender that Oscar starts to communicate through her. When Oscar realizes that he has about 12 days to live, the lady in Pink tells him to take every day as a decade and she suggests he should write God about it. The thing is Oscar's parents are non-believers and they haven't talked much about religion to Oscar. The ambiance that Schmitt creates through the letters of a boy of ten addressed to God is not filled with legalism. In every book he writes, Schmitt's characters, whether they are Muslim Sufis, or Buddhists or even Christians, they are not characterized by strict, literal adherence to the law or to a particular code of religion or morality. What makes them different is the love they have for humanity. Their God is not exactly one of rules but of love. This question; "Does God exist or not?" is a time-honored question which has been asked over and over again since the dawn of history but what Oscar looks for in a God is not the fact that he exists or not. It is the very fact that there is an entity that he can count on and hope for love and courage.Amir (have never heard of him before)as the terminally ill,tender kid Oscar is sweet,cute and cut out for this job. Michèle Laroque as the lady in pink is indeed great.Superb adaptation,great acting,sweet but not preachy story tinctured with homespun philosophy!