A Touch Of The Poet

Rating: 9/10 (21 September 2012)

Unlike their counterparts in the rest of the world critics in the UK - where it opened today, months after its initial release last year - have been giving this movie a hard time. I would have thought that people who spend their working lives watching one violent film after the other punctuated by mindless horror, teenage pap and worse would find a film like Untouchable a pleasant antidote but that doesn't seem to be the case and the fact that it's all true - we learn in end captions that both men remain close - appears irrelevant. So much for hacks; the International public have already embraced it and it's more than likely the UK will follow. For many non-French audiences Francois Cluzet appeared on their radar first only six or seven years ago when Tell No One was an International hit. Jazz buffs had registered him as far back as 1986 when he co-starred with Dexter Gordon in 'Round Midnight' (coincidentally another 'true' story based on an unlikely friendship between American Jazz pianist Bud Powell and a young French fan). I personally have yet to see him give even a mediocre performance let alone a bad one; as for Omar Sy this is the first time I've heard his name. There are, of course, precedents for unlikely male bondings in fact Francis Weber, the French writer-director, specialized in the genre in such titles as Le Chevre, Les Compreres, Tais-Toi etc, Daniel Auteuil has also joined in at least twice (Mon meilleur ami, Apres Vous) and so on but despite it being well-worn Untouchables applies a new lick of paint to the genre and delivers a feel good title to remember.