Well, this certainly is French week, in Hollywood, what with
The Artist raking in most of the major Academy Awards this past Sunday, and here in New York, as the
Walter Reade Theater's most popular annual series --
RENDEZ-VOUS WITH FRENCH CINEMA -- opened last night (at
Alice Tully Hall) with the second most popular movie in French cinema history:
THE INTOUCHABLES (
Intouchables). This year's series, which comes to us, as usual, courtesy of
The Film Society of Lincoln Center together with
uniFrance, is one of the best in memory, offering a wealth of must-sees, a number of just plain good films, and one major clinker, the likes of which proves an embarrassment to all concerned. (It's always salutary to have one of these as a kind of bad-movie touchstone that puts all else into perspective.)
I'll have more to say about
Rendez-vous starting tomorrow. Right now I'll concentrate on
Intouchables, which, though sold out for its two
Rendez-vous screenings, is being released in the U.S. by
The Weinstein Company in late May 2012. So you can see it then. And if you appreciate foreign films, you probably
will because, despite the
pan Stephen Holden gave it in today's
NY Times, it's a lovely piece of film-making, a model of classy discretion compared to movies of the "buddy" genre that are made over here. (Whatever his opinion of the film artistically, Holden gets his facts wrong: the caretaker does not coax the millionaire into paragliding; it's the other way around. And they are
not strapped together paragliding, symbolically or in any other way: That would probably be fatal to them both.)
To begin with, the main characters -- one of France's riches men, now a paraplegic and a hunky Black African from the
banlieues -- are so much more than the usual oil and water types that people the genre, so that the movie's arc always becomes, "They hate each other now, but they'll grow to love each other eventually." These two -- played superbly by the gifted
François Cluzet (above, center)
Tell No One,
In the Beginning) and
Omar Sy (dancing, two photos above, and above, right, who walked away with this year's Best Actor award in France) -- are in each other's corner from almost the beginning. They can help each other, and they know it. So they do it. While this might lessen suspense and anticipation in a lesser film, here it simply allows the filmmakers,
Eric Toledano (below, right) and
Olivier Nakache (below, left), to concentrate on
how all this happens and to give us the succulent, enjoyable details. These details are handled, by the way, with the kind of brevity, subtlety and wit that you do not often find in American "buddy" movies.
Above all
Intouchables is a great love story, albeit one without sex or even much eroticism (well, ears do get rubbed erogenously). It puts you on cloud nine and keeps you there for most of its near-two-hour running time, as it bonds classes, races and men. No wonder it has raised the
ire of a racist slut-politician like
Jean-Marie LePen. More power to it! Though based on reality (these two characters do exist; they helped each other in this manner and remain friends today), the movie is still a lovely fairy tale, one that has a lot to teach us. And that combination, of course, is one of the prime reasons that we love -- and trust -- movies. Some of 'em, anyhow...
You can see the entire
Rendez-vous 2012 program and venues by clicking
here.
