The biggest problem many physically handicapped people face is the pity they receive from those they encounter in their daily lives. Whether it's pity masking revulsion or the assumption that those who are infirm in body are also infirm in mind, the disabled swiftly realize that other people often treat them as less than human.
This lack of pity drives the friendship between two characters in the French hit comedy The Intouchables. It's a dryly funny look at two different people who find redemption in themselves and each other, and thereby break down the barriers between class and race.
Alliance Films Presents The Intouchables, Starring François Cluzet and Omar Sy
Aristocratic Philippe (Cluzet) - paralyzed from the neck down after a paragliding accident - is trying to find a live-in caregiver but none of them can give them what he needs. Enter Driss (Sy), who's only at the interview so he can be turned down and still receive his unemployment benefits. In their barbed conversation, Philippe realizes Driss offers him what no other caregivers can: a lack of pity.
Against his friends' objections - Driss did six months in jail for robbery - Philippe takes Driss on for a trail period. Although Driss is initially more interested in trying to bed Philippe's comely assistant Magalie (Audrey Fleurot) than help Philippe, the two men slowly get to know each other. Driss teaches Philippe how to live again while Philippe broadens Driss' horizons in ways he never imagined.
The Intouchables received the second highest box office gross of any French film, topping the charts for an unprecedented 10 weeks. It also won the Sakura Grand Prix award at the Tokyo Film Festival and leads François Cluzet and Omar Sy shared Best Actor honours. Sy also beat Jean Dujardin (The Artist) for Best Actor at the César Awards, France's equivalent to the Oscars.
On the other hand, Jay Weissberg at Variety denounced it as "offensive" and claimed it "flings about the kind of Uncle Tom racism one hopes has permanently exited American screens." Weissberg's diatribe is misplaced: The Intouchables addresses a racism and class structure that is still entrenched in France, which makes this gentle comedy more daring than it initially appears to North American eyes.
Driss and Philippe's abrasiveness is the corner of their friendship, and it forces them to move past the mindset their respective backgrounds have instilled in them. When Philippe says, "I was raised to believe that I pissed on people like you" it's with a genuine regret, and it displays an edge closer to In the Heat of the Nightrather than feel-good historical rewrites like The Help.
The Intouchables has a British comedic sense, such as the book-ending sequence where Driss and Philippe take bets on how they'll escape police pursuit, or how Driss' attempts to bed Magalie plays out. Admittedly, there's a false note when Driss decides he's going to enliven Philippe's stuffy birthday party with selections from his iPod: Earth Wind and Fire's disco hit 'Boogie Wonderland' instead of the more likely hip-hop. Sy is charismatic enough to carry the scene but the image of tuxedoed upper-class types boogying down does not linger well.
The Intouchables is a Charming, Subtly Subversive Comedy
Rumour has it that The Weinstein Company plans to remake this film for those who are allergic to subtitles. I shudder at how the subtle subversion in this film will collapse under the weight of inevitable saccharine that will accompany such a remake. The Intouchables gets a 4/5.
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