Posted on 12/11/2011 6:54:59 PM PST by Cincinna
When it was released last month, “Intouchables” seemed an unremarkable, lowbrow French comedy, a small-budget film with actors little known outside France hamming it up in a story about a stodgy, disabled aristocrat and the good-humored ex-con whom he hires as his aide.
But only four weeks after its release the movie has attracted 11 million viewers, almost 17 percent of the French population.
“Intouchables,” is based on the true story of Philippe PozzodiBorgo, a wealthy businessman who was left a quadriplegic after an accident, and his aide, an unemployed, Algerian-born resident of a lower-class banlieue. (The film recreates the aide as a young black man from the housing projects.)
The script is centered on the bond that grows between the two.(sn)
For different reasons the characters are lost and lonely, and they end up helping to enrich each other’s lives.
“This epic of the tall black and the little white guy is tenderly funny and a true achievement,” said a recent editorial in Le Monde. Some commentators even compared the buoyant humor of “Intouchables” to Frank Capra’s movies.
“It’s well written and well told,” a sociologist who specializes in cinema and is president of the University of Avignon, said “It tells a lot about the permanent value of living together in harmony”(sn)
“Intouchables” has also been criticized for its idealistic vision of a world without social gaps, where an aristocrat can befriend an ex-con. The newspaper Libération denounced “the dictatorship of emotion as a camouflage to the total absence of thought,” while Variety pointed at what it called the film’s primitive racism, describing Driss as “a role barely removed from the jolly house slave of yore.”
The movie, Variety’s writer added, “flings about the kind of Uncle Tom racism one hopes has permanently exited American screens.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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They also considered “Le Jerry” to be a genius.
French cinema goes PC. I found it interesting to notice that the left wing mouthpiece for the Socialist Party drooled over this trash, while more right wing papers were critical.
The French “Driving Miss Daisy”, a few decades later?
This is a patronizing movie that assuages white liberal guilt, which the French left is submerged in.
Just look at Rwanda, if you want to know the real French attitude about blacks.
The Nazis under Goebbels took propaganda on cellulose to great heights.
They made awful flicks and they made up for it by making lots of people dead. You cannot honestly say the same about the French.
Quentin Tarentino demonstrated this to the acclaim of almost nobody via his amazing work “Inglorious Basterds.”
Want to watch a movie?
Cinema Francais s’il vous plait.
What’s the unemployment rate in France?
“Driving Miss Daisy” was what occurred to me, too. That was a movie I skipped, but couldn’t help hearing about from all sorts of breathless commentaries.
>>>”The French Flock to a Feel-Good Movie “Untouchables””<<<
Given the state of economy in La France, I guess they wanted to take a break from Les Misérables.
Ironically though, most of the best movies I’ve seen over the past few years, have been German movies: Goodbye, Lenin!, Sophie Scholl-The Final Days, to name a few.
Here's how you do a story with universal appeal. First, destroy the world. Render it uninhabitable and everybody is miserable. Then, bring it back, or stop the destruction. That's a comedy (happy ending). Or, everybody is happy and bad things happen, and at the end everyone is worse off than their wildest fears. That's a tragedy (sad ending).
I think I'll watch this movie. A healthy man helps a horribly wounded man and they achieve spiritual victory. What's not to like.
In France, even cinema is an entitlement! The unemployed & students get in free or half price. What an incentive to look fir a job!
Current rate (September 2011) is 9.9%
Yes, I mean to mention that one as well.
One of my favorite moves EVAR..!!!
>>>”Cinema Francais s’il vous plait.”<<<
Oui, bien sûr.
French Cinema is one of the best. The French don’t make good “action” movies (compared to Americans). However, they are good at high quality, innovative movies, together with some of the classics. La Mome (La Vie en Rose) about Edith Piaf, La Belle et la bête, Les Diaboliques (Diabolique), and Le Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain, are a few that immediately come to mind.
Don’t think the unemployed here in Australia can, but students (I think) can get a discount here too. Though I believe it may only apply to limited movie theatres.
Early French cinema us amazing, new movies, not so much.
Some of the best:
Which ones have you all seen?
400 Blows
Shoot the Piano Player
Grand Illusion
Les Enfants du Paradis
La Reine Margot
Diabolique
Au Revoir Les Enfants
Jules and Jim
Story of Adele H
Camille Claudel
Les Visiteurs
Breathless
Jean de Florette
The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
Babette’s Feast
From your list: Diabolique, La Rein Margot, Camille Claudel, and Les Enfant du Paradis. In addition to the ones mentioned in #17. I agree, older ones are more amazing.
In Australia we have a tv station called SBS. It often shows foreign movies (with subtitles) which helps me keep up my linguistic interests in European languages (French, German & Spanish). Since, unlike living in Europe or the UK, one isn’t easily exposed to & doesn’t get the chance to practice a different language, unless it is an Asian one.
We also have a number of cinemas here which mostly show foreign movies (w/ subtitles), particularly French ones. Naturally, actors/actresses such as Juliette Binoche, Jean Pierre Jeunet, Isabelle Adjani, Gérard Depardieu, Catherine Deneuve, and Jean Reno are some of the more popular & well-known ones in an English speaking country like Australia.
In the late 1970s when I was a kid I do remember thinking Alain Delon was really handsome. Louis de Funes was incredibly funny, in the same decade. But, I wasn’t living in Australia then.
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