Intouchables

Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano (2011)

Untouchable, one of the biggest box-office hits to come out of France in decades, is the story of the friendship between Philippe, a vastly wealthy quadriplegic (he was injured in a paragliding accident), and Driss, the previously unemployed ex-con who becomes his carer.  It’s based on a true story and, at the end of the film, the writer-directors show footage of Philippe Pozzo di Borgo and Abdel Sellou, on whom the two principals are based (and who featured in a 2003 French TV documentary called A la vie, à la mort).  I don’t know how much or little of what occurs on screen in the preceding (nearly) two hours actually happened but the style of Untouchable strongly suggests that Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano are not the kind of film-makers to let the facts stand in their way.   For example:  did Driss really part company from Philippe then come back because Philippe was so demoralised without him?  It hardly matters whether he did or not:  the episode is a requirement of the type of movie that Untouchable is.  When he leaves Philippe’s employ, Driss, a Senegalese immigrant, returns to the impoverished neighbourhood, on the outskirts of Paris, where the rest of his family lives.   In his own opulent surroundings, Philippe’s health and spirit decline at the hands of a useless replacement carer.  This is essentially the same as The Sound of Music, when Maria temporarily returns to the convent and the Baroness proves a dead loss at playing games with the von Trapp children.

Untouchable – in both its systematic audience manipulation and a humour based on political incorrectness – is self-confidently and cleverly shameless, in ways that a prestige Hollywood picture would struggle to be nowadays.   Abdel Sellou is not Senegalese but Algerian; one reason for changing his nationality in the film may be that making an Algerian a comic character is a relatively complicated issue for a mainstream French movie – because of both colonial history and contemporary Islamist connotations.  (Islam may be the chief religion of Senegal too but it doesn’t have Algeria’s Al-Qaeda associations.)  Some critics have deplored as regressive racial stereotyping the characterisation of Driss as a clownish, almost childlike black man.  I don’t disagree but I think Nakache and Toledano are being racially exploitative in a more calculating, if no more admirable, way.  Driss is a proxy for a large part of the film’s audience.  When he says philistine things and jokes about disability, these are made to seem less unpalatable because they emerge from the mouth of someone who might himself be on the receiving end of non-PC remarks.  And Driss shows that he doesn’t really mean the dubious things he says.   He cares for a physically helpless man with a skill and devotion that put to shame those who merely profess sympathy for the disabled.  He’s incredulous about the price tag of the paintings on the walls of Philippe’s home; deciding it’s money for old rope, Driss proves himself a talented artist but one who doesn’t lose his commercial nous.  His friendship with Philippe brings culture into his life but he’s never taken in by it.

Although I often found it annoying, Untouchable is an accomplished entertainment and to be simply sniffy about it is to miss the unarguable and complementary appeal of the two leads.  Omar Sy’s crowd-pleasing routines as Driss are obvious but he brings a bit of depth to the character as well as abundant dynamic charm.  As Philippe, François Cluzet is brilliantly controlled:  his performance is necessarily from the neck upwards but it’s very rewarding to watch.  Cluzet convinces you that Philippe would employ Driss primarily because Driss doesn’t pity him.  A sequence in which Driss beats up a man taking Philippe’s parking space is obviously conceived but is given substance by Cluzet’s showing how much Philippe would love to express his anger in the same way.  There’s a good performance too from Anne Le Ny as Philippe’s secretary.  Legends at the end of the film explain what the real Philippe and Abdel are doing now.  The former has married again – perhaps to the real-life version of the woman pen pal (Dorothée Brière) with whom Philippe eventually meets, thanks to Driss, in the film’s final scene.

14 October 2012