Intouchables? Enough already!

Rating: 5/10 (21 June 2012)

Having resisted long enough all the hype hammering the luster of this jewel of a film, I finally decide to go see for myself. I resisted mainly because it seemed to me that this story had been told so many times before in film. Added the fact that French comedies don't do it for me, with the noted exception of Amélie Poulin. Italian comedies and British black humour manage to reach me more.
So these Intouchables? One word : disappointed, but not surprised. The story is predictable and simple, avoiding to bruise sensibilities. Plays to sentimentality. This indecently rich heir to the family fortune, after becoming a paraplegic hires an in-home male nurse straight from the ghetto and they develop a deep friendship. How beautiful! Can you feel my irony ? It is said to be «inspired» by a true story. OK! But what gets me, is ignoring the elephant in the room, that is the meeting between great wealth and hopelessly abject poverty, without a thought that the former cannot exist without the latter. And to think that the French have just voted in the Left with a majority.
François Cluzet's acting didn't seem credible to me. His pasted and silly smile, like Dustin Hoffman's Rainman, gives you the impression of great wisdom to be revealed later. But later never comes. He looks stupid and is, in many ways. What makes the film ultimately is Omar Sy's character, this handsome young black man, with the killer smile, who pushes mischief to the limit. This type of character usually amuses polite society.
Intouchables? Enough already!