Intouchables

I have seen this movie tonight at a preview session as the official french national release is set on 2011, November 2nd. Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakashe, accompanied by the lead actor Omar Sy were meeting the audience and cheerfully answering questions.

The movie is very well written. Although opening on a flash-forward, it is fairly classic comedy about the meeting of two opposite people who were very unlikely to meet. The first one is a paraplegic white middle aged very rich and lonely man, the other one is a young black, poor, unemployed, coming from poor suburbs and a very large family.

What makes the quality of the film, beside the humour present in every scene in which Omar Sy appears (actually most of the film), is the emotion you can feel, through increasingly attaching characters.

The story is based upon a true story, and real characters.

If you want to watch and enjoyable comedy, with very touching moments, this is a must go.

There are interesting insights about arts as well (paintings, classical music, and funk music). What is art? What is its use?

I am now trying to find words to describe this movie for an hour. I couldn't.

You've seen it, or you haven't. It's monumental and outrageously good.

The cast is brilliant. The jokes lovely. The story and the idea behind the movie is beautiful. Especially when you've worked/lived with handicapped people. The music is such a perfect choice, it is unbelievable.

I hope this movie makes a plenty of people think about how good their life is and how bad it could have been.

Bottom line: Oscar-worthy. Period.

Being french and a film maker myself, I have high standards for ratings, and this one definitely deserves in 10/10. I've not seen a film showing our world with such humour in a long time. The jokes are absurd and possibly, with a touch of British humour to them. The directing is beautiful, the acting is incredible, the shots are somehow truthful, if I can say that about a shot. It may be Omar Sy's first time in a leading role, for a major production, but he really delivered, and not just in the funny parts, the delivery of emotions was just spotless. Francois Cluzet was also just as brilliant, as he usually is. I will be recommending this film to everyone, and seriously hoping it will be released in the UK soon enough for me to see it again! Only negative aspect... the Americans are thinking of doing a remake... why do they always have to? I mean would you reconsider remaking the "Joconde" or the Sixtine Chapel to American standards? Film is an art like any other, it travels the world as it is... no need for remakes...

wow, what a wonderful movie!! full of love, friendship and laughs. just like i always said, when a french movie is good, it's not just good, it's great! and this movie simply explains it. no wonder this movie would have won some international awards, it really deserved it. with these two great actors of two generation, the performances of both is just a perfect casting job. this is an absolutely feeling-good movie, warm up your heart without any intention. in this movie, you will see how it's like day and night that the extreme poverty of the immigrant families and the extreme prosperity of the french rich people. by contrast, this movie used it to prove that oil and water could have mixed together and evolved into a very heartfelt social structure.

i enjoyed it 100%.

Do not look at this through the prism of "Foreign Films". You'd be wasting your time and miss something far too important.

Hollywood does scale like nobody else, leaving the competition gasping in its wake. France does intimacy, and brutality. Nothing is sacred. And rather than try to revive the New Wave or emulate Hollywood like most widely seen French films of late, "Intouchables" harnesses its core strengths - ease with intimacy, willingness to ridicule anything and brutal honesty - and delivers one of the funniest, most honest and touching films I have ever seen.

Sy is a failed robber, going through the motions and playing the stereotypical jobless émigré. Cluzet is a romantic and melancholy mind trapped in a useless body. The circumstances that bring them together are too funny to spoil here, but meet they do, and an awkward relationship quickly blossoms as they bring out the best in each other.

The film's simplicity is delightfully misleading: the script is a masterpiece of comedy writing, and however good the rest of the cast is, the central duo is magical. Sy's comic timing will have you in stitches, but it is his honesty and vulnerability that make you fall in love with the character. Cluzet isn't your typical sad-sack, instead, much of the finest pleasures in the film consist in watching him use his keen mind to mess with the world around him (a subplot about an abstract painting really takes the biscuit, you'll know it when you see it).

This is one of the most unique, beautiful and honest friendships ever committed to film. It will make you laugh, it will make you cry... a delightful celebration of everything in life that makes it worthwhile.