Oscar is ten years old and has leukemia. He has stopped speaking to his parents — they can't manage looking at him without falling apart, and he's tired of managing their grief on top of his own. His new friend is Mamie Rose, a volunteer who visits the hospital and lies brilliantly about her past as a world-class wrestler. Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt's film is based on his own novella, and it is one of the most unusual films about childhood illness available: funny, direct, and utterly without sentimentality.
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For French students, the film offers two completely different French voices in sustained conversation: Oscar's direct, unsparing child French and Mamie Rose's warm, exaggerated, story-telling adult French. The letters Oscar writes to God — the film's structural device — are a masterclass in the French of honest self-examination: a child being more honest about his situation than any adult in the film.
Key themes:
- Facing mortality — Oscar knows he is going to die. The film doesn't protect him from this knowledge; it gives him better company. Ask: Comment Oscar fait-il face à la mort? What does Mamie Rose give him that his parents can't?
- Honesty and protection — Oscar's parents can't be honest with him because they're too frightened. Ask: Ont-ils tort? Is there a version of protection that is honest?
- Prayer and meaning — Oscar writes to God every day for twelve days, each day representing ten years of a life. Ask: À qui s'adresse vraiment Oscar dans ses lettres? And: What does the writing do for him?
Scene to use: Oscar's first letter to God — direct, slightly cross, and completely honest about his situation, his feelings, and what he wants. The French is simple, first-person, present and future tense, and contains some of the most honest language in the film. Ask: Qu'est-ce qu'Oscar dit à Dieu que ses parents ne peuvent pas lui dire? Students identify the honesty gap between Oscar and the adults around him.
Low-prep classroom activity: Students write their own letter in French — to God, or to the universe, or to a future version of themselves — from the perspective of someone who has been told something difficult and is trying to process it. Oscar's format: direct address, honest inventory of feelings, one request, one observation about something they just figured out. Short, first person, and completely honest.
The full French lesson plan for Oscar et la Dame Rose is ready at filmarobics.com/products/oscar-et-la-dame-rose — $29.95.
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Students walk away from Oscar et la Dame Rose having heard French carry a ten-year-old's conversation with his own mortality — with more honesty and humor than most adults manage — and having written something true themselves.
