You’ll often find that if cancer is featured in a film, it’s often used to break up the family unit. Death can do that.

This French film manages to do the opposite however, with a cancer actually bringing a family together in this heartfelt comedy drama.

Although Thibaut (Benjamin Lavernhe) is a world class conductor, he is not a well man. He’s just been informed that he has leukaemia, and he is in urgent need of a bone marrow donor.

There’s some hope as there’s a one in four chance that his sister will be a match, which is encouraging. However, he soon learns that his sister isn’t a biological relation, as he finds out he was adopted.

This now increases his chances of matching with someone else to one in a million, which is less encouraging.

However, hope springs again in the form of a brother, Jimmy (Pierre Lottin), who was adopted by someone else at the time, with neither brother knowing about the other.

Thibaut reaches out to Jimmy, who agrees to help him, which allows the estranged brothers to finally get to know one another despite their differences; Thibaut was brought up in a well to do family and Jimmy a working class one.

Jimmy works in the canteen of a factory threatened by closure, but he also plays trombone in the work band. It’s this shared love of music that the pair use as common ground, which allows the brothers to bond. So much so that Thibaut believes he can help his brother, and his band, take their musical skills to the next level, but are they all really up to it?

Actor turned director Emmanuel Courcol’s third film doesn’t waste time with the premise, which he establishes within fifteen minutes of the film; brother meets brother, brother agrees to be donor, brother saves brothers life. Most would stretch that kind of family dynamic over a period of the whole film, but Courcol wants to move swiftly on to the major movement of his film.

There are certainly strong echoes of 1996’s Brassed Off, starring Ewan McGregor and Pete Postlethwaite, about a colliery brass band facing pit closures, but with a sibling twist.

But it does feel as if the director rushed into the music section a little too quickly, and possibly overlooked the possibility to explore the connection between the brothers, and certainly the necessity of Jimmy being a donor.

And then the time at the company, with the band practising, does feel laboured, making it feel a little sluggish despite its best intentions.

Still, the performances between the brothers are engaging, and Courcol has a truly touching finale up his sleeve, offering such an emotional crescendo, it’s likely to bring the house down.