The Intouchables (French movie)

the_syco

Watched The Intouchables today; fascinating film about how ones life can be changed by someone else attitude.

In this case, "a black lad from the ghetto", whilst trying to get 3 (job refusal) signatures to get his welfare check, he becomes employed as a helper for a quadriplegic.

A few nice twists and turns, and a fair few scenes that made me laugh out loud.

It's advisable to get it with subtitles, unless you speak French, as the entire film is in French.

Having watched so much subtitled anime, I decided on taking a chance with this, which was one of my first films that was in a foreign language (well, apart from the f**ked films & anime that Japan pumped out :P), and I'm glad I did.

Going to acquire a few action French ones that I avoided for being French, but after this film, I'll be getting them soon.

So, having watched that, is there any other good French films by the director/writer Olivier Nakache & Eric Toledano (both of them wrote and directed The Intouchables)?

clusk007

Fantastic film, only watched it the other night myself. Funny, sad, exciting and heartwarming all at the same time, this film has it all. Btw the quadriplegic actor, excellent performance and the spit of Dustin Hoffman!


Don't let French put you off a movie, so many excellent French movies. Highly recommend 'A Prophet' and 'Amelie' and if you're looking for another French movie of a slightly more depressing but similar subject 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' is a great watch and even has a bit of U2 in the soundtrack.

the_syco

clusk007 wrote: »

slightly more depressing but similar subject 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' is a great watch and even has a bit of U2 in the soundtrack.

I avoid depressing films, tbh. Found Intouchables always kept the humour.

johnny_ultimate

Hearing mixed things about this. General audience response seems positive, bit some critics hate it. From the Variety review:

Though never known for their subtlety, French co-helmers/scripters Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache have never delivered a film as offensive as "Untouchable," which flings about the kind of Uncle Tom racism one hopes has permanently exited American screens. The Weinstein Co., which has bought remake rights, will need to commission a massive rewrite to make palatable this cringe-worthy comedy about a rich, white quadriplegic hiring a black man from the projects to be his caretaker, exposing him to "culture" while learning to loosen up. Sadly, this claptrap will do boffo Euro biz.

Ouch.

Clanket

Watched this last night with my wife and really enjoyed it. Would highly recommend it.

Marty McFly

You could also check out La Haine and Mesrine especially part 1 two very good French films or if your looking for something fun a bit of a mindless action film have a look at District 13.

pookiesboo

I second A Prophet and Mesrine

Gandalph

Watched this last week and I thought it was amazing, wont spoil anything but the photos of the real guys at the end on whom the story is based kind of upset me! Qui Qui

manlad

Seen this at the Melbourne Film Festival. Amazing.

delbertgrady

I saw this at a preview last night. It's superb. Both central performances are excellent, the pacing is spot on, the supporting cast are solid and it's touching without being overly sentimental. The humour is very natural - the dialogue never seems contrived, or seems like they were setting out to write jokes. Arguably one of the most risk-free cinema recommendations you could make this year, unless it's to someone who just "doesn't like films with subtitles", in which case, that's a whole other conversation.

Francois Cluzet was also in the brilliant 2006 French thriller, Tell No One, which is one of the best films of its kind from the last decade.

CUPimus

I came across an advert for the film 'The Intouchables' and I can only seem to find a trailer that is in french. Is there an english versioin of this film?

Sarxos

This is the official UK trailer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hXSn0t2r_M

The film is in French so likely it will have English subtitles. Curiously it's called Untouchable in Ireland and the UK.

rcdk1

CUPimus wrote: »

I came across an advert for the film 'The Intouchables' and I can only seem to find a trailer that is in french. Is there an english versioin of this film?

You mean a dubbed version? No, only subtitled I think.

Came across it by accident myself. Not the type of movie I normally go for but I found the trailer engaging.

Irish Aris

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Hearing mixed things about this. General audience response seems positive, bit some critics hate it. From the Variety review:



Ouch.

Where did he see the racism? :rolleyes: That's why I stopped reading the critics.
Friends back home in Greece were going crazy about it, saying it is one of the best films of the year.
I saw it today I can only agree with them!!!
Both the leading actors are absolutely brilliant. Especially Omar Sy, at times I was thinking that he might be an amateur, I found him extremely genuine!!!
The way the story is built and how the most trivial things one man says affect the other and/or the atmosphere. . .
To be honest, at times it reminded me Driving Miss Daisy, only I found this less pretentious and more of a feel good film!!!

Catari Jaguar

Watched this in Cineworld at the weekend. I had read about it in their magazine but it didn't mention that it was French or subtitled. Not that it made a difference. What a brilliant film. So engaging, very touching (I teared up at the end) and genuinely laugh out loud funny. The type of film where you "miss" the characters after you leave

johnny_ultimate

Can two genuinely committed, charming performances save a film with so rotten a core? Barely. This is the closest I've ever seen to a safe, clean 'Hollywood' crowdpleaser from an international production. Occasionally, the film's modesty and lack of pretension works in its favour. As said, the two lead performances are often irresistible, and there are some moments when it's hard to resist a chuckle or smile at some of the stuff on screen. Yet, the film is so reliant on cliché and formula that I found myself cringing with embarrassment as much as grinning. The film's 'culture clash' comedy would have seemed a bit naff in an American studio production two decades ago - if anything, there's the rare potential for the inevitable Hollywood remake to be a bit bolder than this. Unfortunately, some of the frequent stereotyping the film does engage in is of a racial / class nature - it's not out-and-out 'racist' as some critics have suggested, but it does fall back on unfortunate shorthand with regularity (I couldn't believe when someone commented that Sy's character looked like Obama, literally just because he was a black guy in a suit. How the **** did that make final cut?).

Outside that minefield of a criticism, the film is just too often lazy and simplistic. It tackles it's potentially interesting subject matter with bland direction and an aversion to insight or controversy. It doesn't deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence as, say, Diving Bell and the Butterfly, but that's an unfair comparison. Much more appropriately, it falls well short of the admirable, unromanticised honesty of The Sessions recently. That wasn't a masterpiece, but it managed to be a beautifully acted and funny crowdpleaser without gross sugarcoating. Early on, Phillipe warns that Driss won't last a month. But we're barely shown any trials or tribulations - it's just a succession of triumphs and laughs. That wears thin quickly. There's potential for tackling more interesting subject matter alongside the buddy comedy - the real-life inspiration for Driss was Algerian, which could have provided some really fascinating social insight about contemporary France - but the film resists such temptations in favour of bland triumphalism. A cheesy soundtrack does much of the emotional lifting.

A breezy comedy about tricky topics is theoretically a welcome change of pace, and occasionally Omar Sy and Francois Cluzet elevate the material well above what the script and directors manage - I can't oversell the two leads commitment to the project. But this doesn't convince that a crowdpleasing approach was the best approach - a familiar story told in an unconvincing way. No doubt the same true story could have been handled with as many if not more laughs while also utilising fewer cheap tricks. There's undoubtedly things to appreciate in Untouchable (to give it its release name here), but at what cost?

joseph brand

JUST watched this film and I'm bursting to tell anyone that it's superb!

I was terrified it would end, and then of course, it did. But as the saying goes; 'it's better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved'. And I certainly loved this masterpiece.

Btw, the lead guy was the spit of Dustin Hoffman, as has already been mentioned above.

9/10 (although I'm tempted to give it 10/10)

snubbleste

Watched this last night.
Excellente.