Francois Cluzet, left, and Omar Sy.By Stephen Whitty
Newark Star-Ledger
They could not be more different.
Philippe is a Frenchman who lives like a let-them-eat-cake royal. His home is palatial, his driveway is clogged with sports cars he never drives, and he's attended by a parade of servants.
Driss is a Senegalese immigrant who lives any way he can. His home is in the crime-ridden projects outside Paris, his feet are his regular mode of transportation, and he has just served six months in prison.
Oh, and there's one other thing separating them, and it's the one thing that ultimately brings them together.
REVIEW
The Intouchables
Who: With Francois Cluzet, Omar Sy. Directed by Olivier Nakache, Eric Toledano.
Rated: R; contains strong language, sexual situations, drug use and violence.
Running time: 112 minutes.
When: Opens Friday, June 8.
Where: Cedar Lee Theatre, 2163 Lee Road, Cleveland Heights.
Grade: B-
Philippe is paralyzed from the neck down, and needs to hire someone to take care of him. Driss is stuck in life, and needs a job, a purpose, something to move forward.
This is the story of "The Intouchables," and it's in the time-honored tradition of the feel-bad/feel-good story, in which someone else's horrible situation teaches us life lessons about regretting nothing, seizing the day or whatever just-keep-positive aphorism you prefer.
What makes the film a little more than that are two elements.
One is that this, as the movie tells us at the beginning, is based on a true story. The rich man really was paralyzed in a paragliding accident; he and his new aide did become friends (although the real Driss was actually an Arab named Abdel). That gives it a foundation.
The other advantage: the film's two stars.
The veteran Francois Cluzet, maybe best known to American audiences as the man stuck in the mystery of the French hit "Tell No One," does some delicate acting as Philippe. The millionaire is not only immobile, but naturally uncommunicative. Cluzet works chiefly with his eyes and a few expressive twists of his head.
Omar Sy, better known in France as a comic writer and TV performer, is winning as Driss, too. It's not an easy task. When we first meet him, the ex-con doesn't seem to be much more than a clownish thug. But as the film goes on, Sy shows us more.
It's a pity the script doesn't develop the characters, or the situations, even further. It's never quite clear why Philippe decides to hire the hostile and completely unqualified Driss, or why Driss begins to take a real interest in his charge. Other plot twists and character developments seem to come out of left field.
Out of some old ideas too, perhaps. The filmmakers said they made the health-aide character black because they wanted to work with Sy. Fair enough. But some of the traits they've given their hero -- a violent temper, an overactive libido and a delirious passion for "Earth, Wind and Fire" -- feel like cliches. At best.
Sy, though, is charming and marvelously physical. And his acting partnership with Cluzet nicely reflects the relationship between their real-life inspirations -- two very different men, joined for purely businesslike purposes, finding their way to an intuitive, interdependent and quietly fulfilling union.