After he becomes a quadriplegic from a paragliding accident, an aristocrat hires a young man from the projects to be his caregiver.
Directors: Olivier Nakache, Eric Toledano
Writers: Olivier Nakache, Eric Toledano
Film genre: Comedy, Biographical
Country: France
Premiere (world): 2011-09-23
Box office: $426 588 510
Do not look at this through the prism of "Foreign Films". You'd be wasting your time and miss something far
too important.
Hollywood does scale like nobody else, leaving the competition gasping in its wake. France does intimacy, and
brutality. Nothing is sacred. And rather than try to revive the New Wave or emulate Hollywood like most
widely seen French films of late, "Intouchables" harnesses its core strengths - ease with intimacy,
willingness to ridicule anything and brutal honesty - and delivers one of the funniest, most honest and
touching films I have ever seen.
Sy is a failed robber, going through the motions and playing the stereotypical jobless émigré. Cluzet is a
romantic and melancholy mind trapped in a useless body. The circumstances that bring them together are too
funny to spoil here, but meet they do, and an awkward relationship quickly blossoms as they bring out the
best in each other.
The film's simplicity is delightfully misleading: the script is a masterpiece of comedy writing, and however
good the rest of the cast is, the central duo is magical. Sy's comic timing will have you in stitches, but it
is his honesty and vulnerability that make you fall in love with the character. Cluzet isn't your typical
sad-sack, instead, much of the finest pleasures in the film consist in watching him use his keen mind to mess
with the world around him (a subplot about an abstract painting really takes the biscuit, you'll know it when
you see it).
This is one of the most unique, beautiful and honest friendships ever committed to film. It will make you
laugh, it will make you cry... a delightful celebration of everything in life that makes it worthwhile
I am now trying to find words to describe this movie for an hour. I couldn't.
You've seen it, or you haven't. It's monumental and outrageously good.
The cast is brilliant. The jokes lovely. The story and the idea behind the movie is beautiful. Especially
when you've worked/lived with handicapped people. The music is such a perfect choice, it is unbelievable.
hope this movie makes a plenty of people think about how good their life is and how bad it could have been.
Bottom line: Oscar-worthy. Period.
My my where do I begin.
To start with I did not want the movie to end at all. Its becoming more and more rare for movies as this one
to come by. This movie completes the circle, as far as movie going experience goes. The movie has left me
with a sort of warm feeling in my heart that cannot be said in words alone. There is something about the way
French movies are made, when they get it right they are simply par excellence. Hollywood kisses concrete.
Anyway, I feel most of us humans are quadriplegic though not physically but emotionally in someway or other.
But what one may agree is that when you cry you cry alone, but when you laugh the whole world laughs with
you.
If just by the word "quadriplegic" you are expecting it to be a dark, heart shattering, emotionally
overloaded movie then I would passionately defend against such a prejudiced opinion. One is not the physical
form alone. One can have a beautiful body but a black heart and vice-verse.
A very well written, full bodied script and an exceptionally well directed movie. Characters cannot become
more real than this on the silver screen. Omar Sy in my opinion has done a very good job. He lived his
character and not played it. To contrast him we have François Cluzet who kept the sparks flying. Omar Sy's
comments on Bach, Vivaldi etc classics had me in splits. And also do not miss out on the singing Human tree,
the very mentioning of which is having me in splits.
Wow !!! that was some movie. Go get this movie guys and see it today, no now.
Audrey Fleurot as Magalie Francois Cluzet as Philippe Omar Sy as Driss