The Marching Band

“The Marching Band concerns itself with class differences without the intersection of race.”

Title: The Marching Band (2024) / French: En Fanfare
Director: Emmanuel Courcol 👨🏼🇫🇷
Writers: Emmanuel Courcol 👨🏼🇫🇷 and Irène Muscari 👩🏼🇮🇹

Reviewed by Li 👩🏻🇺🇸

Technical: 3/5

After a successful run in France, Emmanuel Courcol’s En Fanfare received its U.S. release over the weekend under the title The Marching Band. The premise follows an internationally renowned conductor, Thibaut (Benjamin Lavernhe), who discovers that he has leukemia and needs a blood transplant. Through DNA testing, he finds out that he was actually adopted and has an estranged brother named Jimmy (Pierre Lottin). The emotional beats you’d expect follow without surprises. Thibaut and Jimmy discover common ground, they fight, and then they come back together again, both of them growing throughout the process.

Courcol and co-writer Irène Muscari craft a solid, entertaining movie. But The Marching Band juggles a bit too much and drops some of its narrative tangents. For example, there’s a benefit concert in there that receives a lot of build-up, then goes nowhere. The filmmakers gesture towards a wide swathe of subjects, including cancer, adoption, brotherhood, class tensions, a miner's strike, and marching band culture. Each topic alone could sustain an entire movie; together, they’re each given a hasty, flimsy nod. Still, The Marching Band gets its messages across—supporting the working class and celebrating the power of human connection—even if none of the ideas are explored in depth.

Gender: 3/5
Does it pass the Bechdel Test? YES, but barely

While The Marching Band has a female co-writer behind the script, the main characters, Thibaut and Jimmy, are men. Women appear as supporting characters, such as Thibaut's sister, Rose (Mathilde Courcol-Rozès), and his mom, Claire (Anne Loiret). They’re well-defined and never sycophantic, but the film has no interest in the women’s interior lives. When Rose shares scenes with her mom, Thibaut is almost always there, and they talk to him instead, never passing the laughably easy Bechdel Test with each other.

In Jimmy’s life, women are similarly inoffensive yet one-note. Claudine (Clémence Massart) is his lovely adoptive mom, and fellow band member Sabrina (Sarah Suco) is Jimmy's love interest. The Marching Band does eventually pass the Bechdel Test—once—when Sabrina and a friend greet each other on the street before Sabrina walks away. It’s an indicator of the film’s representation of women: Fine, but they aren’t the focus.

Race: 1.75/5

The main and supporting casts, including Jimmy’s marching band members and factory coworkers, are almost entirely white. A tokenized Black employee gets a singing role, but he only shows up in a couple of scenes. Beyond that, people of color exist solely in the background. The Marching Band concerns itself with class differences without the intersection of race.

A central plot involves Jimmy's factory shutting down as his colleagues attempt to strike and bring awareness to their jobs, which are being lost overseas to Romania. It’s a stark contrast to Thibaut's upper-class life as an internationally recognized musical conductor. But the film doesn’t say much about inequality or systemic injustice; rather, Courcol uses a smaller scope, looking at how Thibaut and Jimmy cross socioeconomic divides to revel in their shared love of music. At best, it’s a celebration of people coming together across the aisle. But a less magnanimous reading argues that the story idolizes Thibaut’s wealth and prestige. Scenes like working-class people crowding excitedly around him, or Thibaut using his celebrity to draw media attention to the factory shutdown, support that take.

Bonus for Disability: +0.50

Thibaut’s leukemia diagnosis and search for a bone marrow donor kick off the story of him discovering that he’s adopted and has a biological brother. Thibaut’s illness doesn't take up too much narrative space—the film prefers to examine the brothers’ relationship and growth—but cancer does serve as the backbone of the film's events.

In a minor role, Jimmy’s bandmate and coworker Jeremy (Antonin Lartaud) has Down syndrome. Affectionately portrayed and never condescended to, Jeremy appears in a variety of scenes, from band practice (he plays the drums), to rapping with a friend, to working next to Jimmy in a kitchen, and having dinner with friends—all of it’s normalized.

That being said, both characters are white men—a demographic that overindexes on disability representation on screen. The main character, Thibaut, is also incredibly wealthy, which is another disability trope. In short, The Marching Band humanizes disabilities and weaves them into real life, but it doesn’t push the envelope or address ableism in the slightest.

Mediaversity Grade: C- 2.75/5

Despite its slick production values and likability, The Marching Band’s story progresses like an overgrown tree in need of pruning. And with a core cast of white men and a generic statement about overcoming class differences through vibes alone, it’s nothing to write home about on inclusiveness. At best, Lartaud gives a lovely performance as an everyday character who happens to have Down syndrome. But he also suffers from the same glancing treatment given to all of the film’s many elements. The end result is an unremarkable movie.

Like The Marching Band? Try these other French films.

Grade: CLiAugust 24, 2026Female/Nonbinary Creator