[French Movie 2011] The Intouchables

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@myphim: You haven't watched it yet? I thought you would have jumped right into it when you first heard about the film. LOL. I posted these reviews to help us better understand the film itself, the real-life characters, the actors and their thoughts about this inspirational story. You have to read these articles after you're done with watching the film itself. Some are very insightful.



Movie Review: 'The Intouchables' sends powerful message about hope
June 8, 2012 12:54 pm

Rating: 3 stars = Good


By Barbara Vancheri / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Frenchman Jean Dujardin of "The Artist" cleaned up earlier this year on the awards circuit -- except when it came to France's version of the Oscar.

Omar Sy of "The Intouchables" won the Cesar for his role as an ex-convict from a housing project outside Paris who becomes the improbable but perfect caretaker for a wealthy, paralyzed aristocrat played by Francois Cluzet.

"The Intouchables" is now a global phenomenon and recent lightning rod for criticism about the portrait of the black man played by the award winner.

It is first and foremost a movie, of course, about Philippe (Mr. Cluzet, reminiscent as always of Dustin Hoffman) who suffered a paragliding accident that left him with no feeling from his neck to his toes.

He needs a caretaker with physical strength who can lift him from his bed or into a car, who can massage his legs and tug on support stockings and who can respond to his panicked breathing in the middle of the night when phantom pain strikes.

What he doesn't need or certainly want is pity, which is why the wealthy Parisian picks the most unlikely applicant to be his aide. Driss (Mr. Sy) is a streetwise native of Senegal who only expected a rushed rejection at the job interview, to help him qualify for public benefits.

Instead, he gets a job, a look at how the 1 percent live, a luxurious bedroom and private bath, and an education in opera, classical music, overpriced artwork and friendship. Philippe is given a second chance at life, the ability to indulge his love of speed again, to see Paris at night and groove to Earth, Wind & Fire.

Directed and written by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano and based on a true story, it's a dramatic comedy that is not sappy or sloppily sentimental. It demonstrates the perils and rewards of risk and is anchored by two excellent performances, one big, one contained.

Mr. Sy's Driss is larger than life, whether smiling, flirting, dancing, treating Paris streets like a raceway, issuing threats or boldly rolling the dice with police officers or strangers. Mr. Cluzet, his hands and legs immobilized, can only move his head but if acting is all about the eyes, he has his most important tool at his disposal.

Now, about those charges of racism, leveled for two reasons. The real caretaker was Arab -- the directors wanted to cast Mr. Sy, so Driss became Senegalese -- and some critics have charged the movie wallows in racial stereotypes.

Only one line brought me up short and that's when a woman in Philippe's employ looks at Driss, clad in a suit for a formal affair, and suggests, "You look like Obama." Uh, not really. Driss is bald and more muscular, for starters. That's a misstep, though, not a sweeping indictment that should keep anyone away from this life-affirming film.

It's based on Philippe Pozzo di Borgo, a descendant of two prominent French families and director of a celebrated champagne house, and the second-generation North African he came to affectionately call his "guardian devil."

Each in his own way was an untouchable -- caretaker Abdel Sellou, a pickpocket, con man and charismatic gang leader, because he felt marginalized and could outrun the police, and Philippe because he literally could not reach out to anyone and another's touch was painful to him.

Their story was told in a French documentary and then, a book called "A Second Wind" by the real Philippe. Mr. Sellou also has penned a memoir, "You Changed My Life," arriving in stores June 19.

"Intouchables" reportedly will be remade in English, possibly with Colin Firth as the disabled man. Its messages about the healing power of hope, friendship and humor and learning to see the possibilities, not the limitations, bear repeating in any language.

In French with English subtitles. Opens today at the Manor Theater in Squirrel Hill.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/ae/movie-reviews/movie-review-the-intouchables-sends-powerful-message-about-hope-639442/

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Yuuni

said: @arch00 : Annyeong :-hI'm one of the Faithling bunch.Nice to meet you. :)I'll hope you'll be able to make it for movie night.

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May 21, 2012

‘The Intouchables’: Heartfelt and funny



“The Intouchables,” opening Friday (5/25/12) in limited release, offers the epitome of the breakout performance: Omar Sy, who won the Cesar, the French Oscar, for best actor for his performance in this film, defeating Jean Dujardin for “The Artist.” Sy was already a star in France – but he’ll come as a surprise to Americans.

A Senegalese actor who grew up in France, Sy gives a performance that is incredibly vibrant, underlined by a certain sadness. He fairly bursts off the screen, playing a character that is an embodiment of undirected life force, one who gradually learns to focus his energy to make him someone truly to be reckoned with.

Sy plays Driss, an unemployed immigrant in Paris who initially is just looking for someone to sign his form, acknowledging that he’s applied for jobs, so he can collect unemployment. Fresh out of jail after a six-month stint for robbery, he catches the eye of Philippe (Francois Cluzet), who admires Driss’ willingness to look at Philippe as a person, rather than a good deed.

Philippe is a millionaire; he’s also a quadriplegic, in the market for a new caregiver. We see the other applicants, all offering noble reasons (or worse) for wanting to work for Philippe, who lives in an amazing chateau in the center of Paris. Driss, however, doesn’t offer him pity; he treats him as an equal, rather than an employer or, worse, a cripple in need of pity.

Driss finds himself unexpectedly employed, living in luxurious surroundings and achieving an intimacy with his employer that few friends ever reach. Their relationship as boss-worker evolves to friendship that opens new vistas for both of them in ways neither could anticipate.

Based on a true story, “The Intouchables” is a movie that already has been tarred with the condescending brush of American critics who mischaracterize it as patronizing to the character of Driss. One went so far as to wrong-headedly invoke the inaccurate specter of racism and to use the term “Uncle Tom,” which seems like a willful misreading, through a particularly uptight lens.

The title (a clumsy one, at best, blending English with the French word for “untouchable”) refers to both characters: the drastically disabled man, who essentially is shut away from society; and the immigrant, part of a group with whom the country’s natives have, at best, an ambivalent relationship.

In this film by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, both have been marginalized – and each man gives the other something. For Driss, raised on the streets, it’s not just a brush with classical music and art museums, but a sense of his own possibility in life, beyond what he’s already done. For Philippe, it’s re-engaging with life in ways he’d given up on since the paragliding accident that cost him his mobility.

It’s a distinctly American response to view this through the prism of race, simply because the characters are black and white. The relationship between these men has to do with class; race never enters into it. It’s a story of rich and poor, immigrant and Frenchman. Viewing it through an American lens on race ignores the reality of the story.

It’s neither condescending nor patronizing; it’s simply human, beautifully so. The give-and-take between Philippe and Driss is honest and sharply humorous; each has a wit that tends to the inappropriate, which bonds them in ways that have nothing to do with race, social status or anything else, other than a shared ability to laugh at things that might appall others.

Cluzet, who looks more like Dustin Hoffman with age, gives a wonderfully dry performance as a rich man trying to regain control of a life that suddenly slipped from his grasp. It’s a terrific bit of acting, accomplished only with his face, his head and, most particularly, his eyes, which can be amazingly expressive.

As noted, Sy is like a force of nature in this role, capable of introspection but also of dazzling energy. A scene in which he breaks loose on the dance floor to the sounds of Earth Wind & Fire’s “Boogie Wonderland” is one of the most merry in recent memory: an explosion of physical joy in an environment that has been sapped of it.

Uplifting, life-affirming and funny – they’re among the best words to describe “The Intouchables.” Ignore the nay-sayers; this is a film that will touch your heart in the most direct way imaginable.

source: http://hollywoodandfine.com/reviews/the-intouchables-heartfelt-and-funny/

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The Intouchables and Its Filmmakers: Subversive, Exceptional and Unapologetically Real

Posted: 05/21/2012 6:25 pm

E. Nina Rothe


(L-R) Francois Cluzet as Philippe and Omar Sy as Driss in The Intouchables

The real magic of the movies lies in the filmmakers' ability to transport their audiences to places they have never been and wish they could inhabit. Such is the case with the upcoming release of The Intouchables thanks to the film's auteurs, Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache.

Nestled in the comfort of my front row seat at a screening last week, Toledano and Nakache made me believe. From the first scene of a stunning car chase through Paris at night, to the last (hint: stay for the credits) they made me believe that friendship is the most important thing in life, that a person can continue to thrive even after becoming a quadriplegic and that a dialogue between cultures -- even in a society that is currently extremely tense on immigration issues -- is possible.

But as humanly magical as their film is, the one thing thankfully missing from The Intouchables is what Spike Lee once called "the magical, mystical Negro", that secondary, stereotyped black character whose sole purpose in the story is to teach the white lead some wisdom or cure him of his sins. What Toledano and Nakache have done with their two leads Philippe and Driss -- sublimely played by François Cluzet and Omar Sy respectively -- is to create two whole characters, flawed and powerfully flesh and blood, who are clearly both important on their own but also to each other.

While in the real life story on which The Intouchables is based Driss is Abdel, a North African Arab with all the same virtues and weaknesses as Sy's character in the film, Toledano and Nakache made an artistic choice to transform him into a second generation West African. Mostly due to their unfaltering belief that only Omar Sy could play this complex, pragmatic, energetic man, it was a decision that was celebrated in France. There, the large immigrant African community hailed the film as one they had long waited for, finally and fairly showing their daily struggles and living conditions.

Sy went on to win a César for his role, the first black actor in history to win the prestigious French equivalent to the Oscars, cementing France's adoration with The Intouchables, and the film went on to conquer hearts across Europe. In Italy, where I first heard about it, it broke all kinds of box office records and created public discussions about immigration and the issues faced by hired caretakers and those in their care.

Here in the U.S., the film has thus far received a slightly different reception, as some American critics have described Driss' character as a "stereotype." I found him instead to be the total opposite, a refreshing change from the typical The-Green-Mile-slash-Forrest-Gump subordinate African American parts we are now subliminally accustomed to watching here. And don't even get me started on The Help...

I caught up with Toledano and Nakache in NYC and enjoyed an engrossing conversation with the filmmaking duo who are at once charming, hilarious and intense. They talked about their chemistry as a duo, what they envisioned before starting The Intouchables and the spark they felt which made them decide they needed to make this film. For those of us with a short attention span, you can catch my "Fast Culture: In 180 Seconds" video at the bottom of this piece.

You have such a successful relationship as filmmakers, what do you each bring to the table?

Eric: We are very different, like in the movie. Olivier has a special talent -- I prefer to speak about him. And he'll speak about me, if he wants... He knows how to capture people. Like if we are in a meeting, he can look at someone and capture one expression or something from that person. Not an imitator but he can take a sign, the comportment, the behavior that person has and he makes me laugh. He has a good sense of observation and he makes a beautiful coffee.

That's important!

Olivier: Yes, especially in the morning!

And what does Eric bring to it?

Olivier: It's a chemistry between us, like you said...

Eric: "As" you said!

Olivier: As you said, we write together, in front of each other, we talk a lot, we talk about scenes when we begin to write, we think about the scenes first. -- (Eric whispers something in French)

And he tells you what to do?

Olivier: Yes, he just said "tell her my qualities"...

So what are his qualities, in three words, describe Eric.

Olivier: He's good with the structure of the movie, when you write you have to think about the big picture. So three words would be anticipator, funny, rigorous.

And Eric, three words to describe Olivier?

Eric: impersonator, he doesn't like conflict, I don't know how to say it with an adjective, peaceful perhaps? And humorous. So humorous, peaceful and "capturateur" -- (translator chimes and translates it as "someone who can perceive what people are like and reproduce it").

Olivier: And gorgeous of course!

You were inspired by the true story portrayed in the documentary La Vie et la Mort but what was the spark that made you connect personally to the story?

Eric: The spark was that in life you have some boxes from which you can't move: you're rich, you're white, you're disabled, you're from a poor neighborhood, you are black -- and all these boxes are so limiting, chocking. The spark was that in this story, there are two stars which are exploding, connecting, very extreme opposites and at the point of their meeting, everything is going to change, when they change the views they have on the other one. It's very easy for Philippe to think that because Driss comes from this kind of neighborhood you should not let him inside your home because it can be dangerous. We have a character in the movie who tells him "you have to be careful about this guy, they have no pity." It's very easy for us to think that this guy, when he's coming in, will do a bad job. Everything is easy but they go through it and think differently. That's a modern fairy tale.

Olivier: I remember one thing, when we saw the documentary, there is a spark, a scene when Abdel in the morning lift him up in his arms from the bed, and carries Philippe so they are face to face, two men, one's head on the other's shoulder. That image was so strong.

Do you want to address the U.S. critiques about Driss being a "stereotype"?

Eric: We felt really hurt. There is a tone of comedy in our movie, which is subversive, it's not politically correct so I think people didn't understand this. We had to speak out [in a Huffington Post piece] and say, you have to open your mind and not watch the movie with a special American culture. To open your mind and see that we in Europe have different history, different social context, different waves of immigration. In our movie, the two characters are as equals, there is no hierarchy between them. They are pragmatic, they need each other. When we asked Philippe, why did you hire him, he said, "because I needed him. It was just a problem of need. I'm not Christian with good feelings just pragmatic." But later, as equals, they received something from the other, and this is the possibility which both opened their minds and a new friendship. An exceptional friendship.

Is there a scene you envision before you even start a film and what was it for The Intouchables?

Olivier: The first scene, the car chase.

Eric: We wrote the first scene before the script, before everything. The cops stop them, do we know that Philippe's disability is true, have they stolen something, are they drug dealers? We still don't know who they are...

Olivier: And the Opera scene too. And at the gallery, "no handy, no candy."

And the dance scene?

Eric: Yes, because it's a special emotion to have someone dance for another one... And the eyes of François, when he sees Driss dancing for him, it's a real emotion for me...

Top photo by Thierry Valletoux Copyright: © 2011 Gaumont -- Quad -- All images, trailer courtesy of The Weinstein Company, used with permission -- Camera courtesy of Canon USA

To read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/e-nina-rothe/the-intouchables_b_1532468.html

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arch00 said:

Yuuni

said: @arch00 : Annyeong :-hI'm one of the Faithling bunch.Nice to meet you. :)I'll hope you'll be able to make it for movie night.

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class="black" Interview: The Makers of The Intouchables Source: Edward Douglas
May 25, 2012



A year ago, very few Americans had heard of French filmmaking duo Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, despite having made three movies, but the duo's fourth film The Intouchables may change all that, as it's already an enormous global sensation, grossing over $300 million before even opening in the United States.

It reunites them for the third time with French comic Omar Sy, this time playing Driss, a Senegalese-born guy from the projects who gets a job taking care of quadriplegic millionaire Philippe, played by François Cluzet, even though he's not nearly as experienced as other candidates. Over the one-month trial period, Driss helps Philippe to learn to live life again and even helps him reconnect with women, the two very different men becoming the best of friends.

We talked to the two filmmakers in early March, less than a week after the Weinstein Company's other French film The Artist pretty much swept the Oscars, and the duo had quite a few questions about how things worked in America and were anxious about how the film might be received despite having enormous success elsewhere.

You can also read our earlier interview with the film's stars François Cluzet and Omar Sy here.

ComingSoon.net: I know this is based on a true story and there was a documentary about the relationship between the millionaire and his caretaker and how they became friends, so how did you guys find out about it and get involved with adapting their story into a comedy?

Olivier Nakache: We actually saw a documentary about this in 2003. We were really impressed by the story, but we knew back then that it was too soon for us. We felt that we did not have the right weapons in our arsenal as filmmakers and as storytellers, but we did know that it was something that deserved to be used as a subject. It included all the ingredients we like - a strong story and a lot of comedic potential.

CS: Having seen this documentary and waited to do something on it, did you yourselves get the rights to tell the story or did you have a producer who did that?

Eric Toledano: We asked our producer who had made three movies with us, "We are interested in this story. What can we do?" Philippe wrote a book and at the end of the book was his Email. We sent him an Email and he said he was living in Morocco now because the weather was better for his health. We sent him an Email and he said, "I can't move but if you come to me, we can speak." We took a plane with the producer and he said, "Many people are interested in my story and there are many screenplays written but none of them are very good so I didn't give the rights. I want first, a comedy; secondly, I don't want something oversimple or cheese; and third, I don't want any money. I want you to give 5% of the profits of the movie to an association," and now she's a rich association.

CS: I was going to say. That was probably the best deal ever made on behalf of a charity.

Toledano: They've already received one million Euro, more than one million dollars and that's only the beginning. We visited the association that allows handicapped adults to live together in a beautiful environment.

CS: I know you worked with Omar before and François mentioned you wrote this character based on him, which changes the story because now his character is from Senegal, so can you talk about how you decided to make that change and write it for Omar?

Nakache: We wanted to work with Omar again and we wrote the first part for him. Omar was the most natural choice. Basically, the two people, Adel and Omar, even though they may be physically different and come from different ethnic groups in a way, socially and culturally in France, they belong to the same group of immigrants who live in the Banlieu, which is like the projects, the ghettos. They come from that same cultural group so for a French audience, there's no difference between the two.
Toledano: In 2005, there were big riots in France, like what happened in Tottenham, England so recently, and this was a special time for France because it was unexpected and when we saw on television the group of the riots, it was always the same people - blacks and Arabs. This is the same group, so it was more important to have the good actor than the good nationality and Omar was so natural and spontaneous - his fantasy, his way to dance, his sense of humor.
Nakache: He's got funny bones.
Toledano: To tell someone in a wheelchair, "No handy, no candy" or some kind of joke, you have to be sympathetic and have empathy from the audience and more important, it was the actors, not the origin of the actors - black or Arab would have been the same for our audience.

CS: And you wrote the character of Driss more towards what you knew Omar could do? Did you know he could dance so well?

Toledano: Yeah, because we made three movies with him and we knew his qualities, and when we wrote the script, we wrote it especially for him so we knew that we'd have a scene of him dancing. We used his qualities.
Nakache: We made a custom-built suit for him.
Toledano: He used to say when he did the promotion in France that "They made me a costume that was as comfortable as a costume, beautiful as a costume and I felt like as if I was wearing underwear because it was the uniform of the projects." They always like baggy things.

CS: By creating this outfit for him, he was able to get into the character very easily.

Toledano: It was easy but it was not without any risk, because we are on a small frontier of what we can do and what we can't do, and it was fragile. You don't know what the reaction will be of people in wheelchairs when we make a joke, they might not be happy about that. We don't know how the people of the projects will react about how you represent them in a feature, so it wasn't without risk. At the beginning, when Oliver and I were being asked "What will be your new movie?" "It's about a paraplegic…" "Wow, why? Why?" They were scared.
Nakache: "No more comedy for you?"
Toledano: There is one guy from the projects who was saying "This subject is untouchable. You don't make a comedy about this." And last year in France, all the movies have in common are that they're about subjects we don't have to touch. For instance, to make a film without dialogue today, at the time of 3D, is amazing. To make a movie about very tense subject like pedophiles ("Polisse") and there's another movie that's very successful in France ("The Declaration of War") that's about a couple who have a love child. The common points of all these movies is to choose some subjects that are very subversive.

CS: Why do you think that's going on right now in France?

Toledano: I think it's a reaction about America. The Top 10 box office movies in America are sequels - it's "Harry Potter," it's "Twilight." This is not movies for us. We learn from America and we send a message to America. "The Artist" is a message, a message of love. We made a buddy movie between a black guy and a white guy. This is a model of America. Remember for example, "Trading Places."
Nakache: "48 Hours"… "Midnight Run"
Toledano: The buddy movies like this.. "Rain Man." Buddy movies are very strong. The big story between two strong characters who have nothing in common and they're going to live together. It's from American movies. So we have an exchange between France and America, because we're always discussing. We invent cinema and some critic's review mentioned that at the same time "Hugo Cabret" hails Meillies as "The Artist" pays homage to Hollywood movies.

CS: Oh, believe me, I interviewed people from both movies and wondered if they realized there was another movie from the other side of the Atlantic about their country.

Toledano: We grew up with "Trading Places" with Eddie Murphy, with the big buddy movies like this and these are our references really.

CS: I wanted to ask about the title, which you kind of answered when you talked about how you combined two subjects that were considered untouchable.

Toledano: Nothing to touch. A comedy about a paraplegic, we can't touch.
Nakache: You know the Indian caste system with the five different castes? The people who aren't in society who live on the margins? You can't touch them. They have no position, no place in society, like our characters, so we wanted to laugh about this fear of society - the handicapped and the projects.
Toledano: The choice of the title is that we're always on the verge of the subject and "The Intouchables" is really about being on this limit. They're intouchable because they're behind the lines about their social class.

CS: I'm not sure if any of your previous movies were released here at all.

Toledano: In L.A.
Nakache: There was a French festival and our second and third movie, they had a little success in France.
Toledano: But nothing compared to this.

CS: With that in mind, has anyone come to you about releasing your other movies here? I know I'm interested in seeing the other movie you've done with Omar.

Toledano: In France, they made a new DVD and wrote "By the directors of The Intouchables with Omar Sy."
Nakache: You have to know that Omar is very, very famous in France because he's got a show on TV every night, a very funny show.
Toledano: A small show, only five minutes but it's at the biggest hour of Canal + and it's a very trendy channel.
Nakache: You can compare it to 20 years ago when Eddie Murphy made "Beverly Hills Cop," coming from "Saturday Night Live." It's exactly the same with Omar.

CS: That's funny, because this was literally the very first thing I saw him in and he was great.

Toledano: And everyone says he looks like a black American actor. He moves like Will Smith and the model for him was an American black actor.
Nakache: Yes, he has grace in the way he moves, the way he talks.

CS: It's funny because before "The Artist," Michel Hazanavicius made the OSS117 movies, and while I saw those, very few Americans have seen them.

Toledano: And now "The Artist" is working here? Really working?
Nakache: People like the movie?

CS: More or less, but I have a feeling they'll like this movie more.

Toledano: Because it's in color?

CS: No, it's not just that, but like you said, "Trading Places" is a great buddy comedy and people love seeing two characters who shouldn't be together…

Toledano: It's more commercial I think.

CS: Exactly and as long as they can get past reading subtitles, I think they'll be fine.

Toledano: The only question I have is do the Oscars generally give prizes to commercial movies?

CS: It depends. The most commercial movie at this year's Oscars was "The Help" which made $170 million and only won one award.

Toledano: "Titanic" for example had so many Oscars.

CS: Yeah, but that's a rare example. It's different every year.

Nakache: This is the first time in France where a mainstream film were awarded a prize.

CS: No, I think a lot of people noticed when Omar beat Jean Dujardin just two days before Jean won the Oscar. I knew your movie was opening "Rendezvous," but I only saw it a couple days after the Oscars, so the timing was perfect. I want to ask about taking license with telling the story including how Philippe meets this woman through love letters…

Toledano: It's all fiction.
Nakache: It's true that in real life Abdel reconnected Philippe to women.
Toledano: Philippe thought it was over for him to have a love affair and it's really because of Abdel that it was possible. In true life, he relocated to Morroco and found a new woman in Morocco.
Nakache: And they were together for ten years, this is true.
Toledano: We detailed six months approximately but the truth is that they spent ten years together.

CS: What did Philippe think of the movie? He gives you the rights to make a comedy and you have a different story.

Toledano: He was really open. He said, "You do what you want. You are the directors. I just want a good movie and a funny movie and a deep movie." He saw the screenplay and sometimes he was saying, "This is not possible. Your situation isn't available because I can't do that." It was more of the medical authenticity that he was concerned about, not on the deep meaning.

CS: From a technical sense, you start the movie with a scene that happens much later and I was curious why you did that. You get the idea of the relationship but it kind of gives away that they'll be reunited later, so I was curious about why you made that the opening scene?

Toledano: Because we think that the audience is smart and if you see a poster with Omar and Cluzet, obviously going to be together during the whole movie. It was Billy Wilder's saying, "Allow the spectator to sum up 2 plus 2." This relationship is very, very undefinable, so let's start with something very undefinable. It was odd for us to have a chronological story, so they begin, they meet, so we preferred to deconstruct the story and to catch the spectator with a powerful first scene with car chases and the policemen. That part of the story is actually true; that actually happened, and when Philippe told us the story, we knew right away it was going to be our opening scene.

CS: You mentioned the relationship between American and French cinema, which is an interesting one. I've been writing about movies for ten years and I'll never understand why tehse great films from France don't get bigger audiences here and they always want to remake them into English. Where do you guys go from here? Do you want to make an American film?

Nakache: No, no, we stay in France. We make comedies and we use the French culture to make comedies. It's true, you're right. When we show our first, second or third movie in the U.S. for one screening, the audience liked them very much and laughed. Every time the audience asks us where can we see your movie? Why aren't your movies released in the U.S.? Maybe this will change with "The Artist"?

CS: It's just an odd phenomenon where Americans see a French film and think "This is a great movie, let's remake it into English with Dustin Hoffman and whomever…"

Toledano: That's what we think but I think for the cultural problems of subtitles, they have to make it again for North Dakota and Minnesota. I don't think for New York it's a problem for the real American audience, they have to see American actors speaking in English. Maybe it will change, but it's more cultural than ideological. Dubbing is not an option? There is dubbing in America?

CS: It's kind of weird. They do dub movies for when you see them on airplanes like with "Crouching Tiger," if you see it on TV, it will be dubbed and it's terrible and almost unwatchable.

Nakache: I don't like dubbing.

The Intouchables opens in select cities on Friday, May 25.

source: http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=90335

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@myphim  >< i have already negotiating with my boss about changing my shift "fingers crossed" about the watching stream, can i bug in there  1channel has it too with DVD version. 
edit--sorry sorry i did not have idea that there are DVD and also HD version ) 

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class="black"Interview: Olivier Nakache and Eric ToledanoBy Dork Shelf May 28, 2012

Although the French writing and directing duo of Olivier Nakache and Eric Tolenado had been familiar with the true life story behind their latest effort – the comedy drama The Intouchables, opening this Friday in Toronto and expanding to several other cities over the next two weeks – they felt they were initially too immature to tackle the story of a Parisian street tough (played here by Omar Sy as a Senegalese man, when in reality the inspiration was Algerian) who begrudgingly takes on caretaking duties for a rich and once thrill seeking parapalegic man (François Cluzet) who takes to the young man for his inability to comprehend pitying someone.

The duo were first inspired and made aware of their film’s dynamic friendship by the documentary A La Vie, A La Mort in 2006, shortly after making their first film, a romantic comedy named Just Friends (Je prefere qu’on reste amis), and neither thought they would be able to do the film’s larger than life personalities justice. Adding to the level of difficulty was the fact that both men being profiled were still alive, well, and in contact with each other. The real life counterpart for Cluzet’s character had even written two books on the subject and had already fended off advances from several fictional filmmakers in the past.

In separate rooms during a stop in Toronto, Andrew Parker sat down with Olivier and Brandon Bastaldo with Eric to talk about the journey of bringing the story to the screen, their own fears going in and now that the movie is seeing release, and how sometimes tragedy can lead to the best comedy.

Dork Shelf: We’ve read that your film has become the second most successful French film of all time. How does that make you feel?

Éric Toledano: It’s strange because we were just a couple of directors six months ago, and we made three movies (each one was acceptable at the box office) and suddenly you have something like a storm. You have the cue before the theatre and all the news speaking about the movie. It’s heavy to take first, to be honest. It’s like a tsunami in your life, it’s a changed reaction. It’s strange first, and after when you accept this and assume that, you feel happy. If it was another movie it (being happy) could be perhaps harder, but with this movie it speaks about really interesting things: disability, education, society, about neighbourhood projects.

DS: Was it hard to approach and convince Philippe Pozzo di Borgo and his former caretaker Abdel in real life since the documentary had already chronicled their life?

Olivier Nakache: No, not really. He had written a book, not specifically about this story, but about his life. At the end of the book you can find his personal mailing address. So we mailed him, and he said that we weren’t the first. So he asked us to come and see him in Morocco, where he lives now, and he said he would see.

We went without producer to Morocco and we spent a full day with him. We laughed a lot and at the end of the afternoon he said “Done. This is for you.” We sent him our previous movies and he said he trusted us and told us to make what we wanted to make. He said he wanted us to make people laugh a lot.

Then our producer went to draft up a contract with him and asked what he wanted and he said he didn’t want anything aside from taking 5% of the profit from the movie and putting it into his foundation for persons with disabilities. Now with the success of the film in France, he’s very happy. (laughs)

DS: I remember reading that you guys were first inspired by watching a documentary almost ten years ago now, but you said at the time that you felt you weren’t mature enough to make a film like this. What changed over the past decade that made you come back to it now? Was it more of a mental change or a change in your physical filmmaking abilities?

ON: Both. Totally both. We didn’t have the cinematic tools. At the time we had only made just one movie and we didn’t feel in any way ready. We found that it was a great story for any movie, but we were just too young to really understand it. We found that after our last movie, So Happy Together, which wasn’t released here, I don’t think, and working with Omar (Sy) again, and after the end of that we said we wanted to make something special just for him. Some sort of lead role. Then we came back to that documentary.

We went to see if Omar was interested and we said if he agreed we would make this movie. If he turned it down, we would have made something else. It was specifically for him or nobody.

DS: What can you say about you and Olivier’s process of reforming this documentary into a major motion picture?

ET:  You know in France, we say that you have ‘true cinema’ on one side and then comedy on the other side. Comedy is considered mainstream and to make it into the box office- and you have true cinema. We thought from the beginning, from the start, that comedy is an important style of cinema so we tried always to have a deep subject, a deep film with comedy on the top. In England they did it, in Italy they did it in the past, so we were looking for this kind of subject. Speaking about true things, true life, true sufferings of people but with humour. So when we discovered the documentary we just tried to reach the guy and show him what we’re going to do with his story. At the end he trusted us and allowed us to write the script, and that’s the process.

DS: The Intouchables often alternates between events of the past and present, while the film could have been told in a much more linear fashion. Why did you decide to tell the story this way?

ET: You know it’s pretty simple. When we saw the documentary and when we met the guys, we understood one thing. Their relationship is weird-it’s not easy to describe. If we went in a chronological way, it would be so classical. So we were thinking , how can we express the way we feel? You know the first scene when Driss is driving Phillipe to the Emergency Room in Paris very fast, we thought: this is an unconventional start for a movie and you don’t know where you have arrived. Is this an action film? Is it a comedy? Is it a drama? We put the audience where we were when we discovered the story. The story is odd, and because it’s odd we thought let us begin at the middle, not the beginning. It was not that when we were editing the movie that we decided to do this, it was from the beginning that we said ‘let’s take the audience and put them in the middle of this relation’.

DS: A few publications have tried to call out its The Intouchables’ representation of race relations, and it seems that the film has received a more cynical reception in North America. What do you think about this backlash?

ET: In France and Europe we have almost 35 million people who have seen the movie, and the fact that the American’s are the only guys to ‘understand’ the real sense of the movie seems weird. But with the Americans you have to pay attention, it’s always difficult to understand. The Americans can be really full of paradoxes. For example, they have a black guy as the President, but the relationship between black and white is always very complicated. When you speak about the white and the black, it’s full of stereotypes. So I think that they have a problem because they try to understand the movie with their own culture, with slavery and ‘Uncle Tom’. We have no ‘Uncle Tom’ in France, we have another story that is completely different. We have immigration from another colony- Africa was French. So the link between immigration from Africa and people from France is completely different, so we don’t have any moment when people talk about this in different countries, only America. And perhaps this is a vestige of the political correctness in America, because people say ‘you don’t have to say that the black are poor’. But indeed the blacks are poor, and it’s not my fault that this is a fact. When you depict France, you have to say the truth. When you go into Paris you are going to see the Eifel Tower, you’re going to see Dior, Lancôme, Chanel- all the luxury boutiques. But if you go 10 kilometers, to the high rising project, the poor neighbourhoods, there are only blacks and Arabic people. It’s not my fault, this is the truth. And out of this film? This is the first time that a black guy has won a César in France, the first time a black guy is the lead actor of a film. So they don’t understand at all what has happened in France.

DS: That’s interesting, because while watching your film, race representation wasn’t really on the top of my priorities.

ET:  Right, and you have to know that in France all the people from neighbourhoods all over came to see the movie. All the French people came to the cinema, and if they felt hurt about anything they would tell. But if anyone said anything, it was a consensus in France. I think the problem of America is that they have analysis that considers their culture, and it’s a problem of open mind. There is a reason why they are not buying a movie with subtitles, they just want their culture. For example, here in Toronto the release is with subtitles, but in America there will be a remake. I like America, but sometimes I don’t understand them, and here in Toronto it’s a median because we are a little bit in Europe- we are on the ‘bridge’. But I have to say that in America we went to Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York for the release and the screenings were wonderful. It’s really just a small part of the reaction.

DS: You’ve worked almost exclusively with Eric. What keeps drawing you to work with him?

ON: With Eric it’s almost inexplicable the kind of working relationship we have because it’s such a special connection. Eric and I always write together and we practically live together because we’re always working together. We began together through short movies and by having the same kind of taste in movies. You’ll never find one movie that he likes that I don’t like. It will never, never happen. We connected when we were 16 years old about very specific movies, and it was rare at our age to know about Italian comedies and Woody Allen movies. I don’t know how it happened, but it works. Now we’re going to begin a process of writing a new movie, which we actually started on the plane on the way over here. Maybe one day we’ll make a movie separately if we find a topic that fits one of us more than the other one, but I do know that even then we’ll write it together to some degree. That’s the important point.

DS: So the writing duties generally take precedence over the direction for you guys?

ON: Yeah, because it’s the material we have to work from and the story’s always most important to us. When we saw this documentary we saw the story first. We never wanted to make a story about disability or about this guy from the suburban housing projects. We wanted a full story.

We also like to use comedy when talking about a deep subject that talks about society. That’s what we like. That’s why we like comedy from England, or from here in Canada where you have people like Ken Scott. It’s human.

DS: I think other filmmakers would have tried to make this story as serious as possible, which is interesting to see. Was the biggest challenge to set that tone originally, especially since you knew these people and what they had been through already?

ON: Yes. Yes. You are totally right on this point. It was a huge challenge. We were motivated by the story, but we wanted to show the love and keep it light within this deep subject. It’s tough. This guy has suffered a lot. Both of them have experienced a deep sense of loneliness, and we wanted to put the humour in this story.

On the plane when I came here I saw the movie 50/50 for the first time. It’s a great movie, and I watched it because a journalist in Montreal told me I should and that I would love it and he was absolutely right. It’s a very hard story to tell, but they make lots of jokes, and it’s funny how it affects people more when you use those kind of jokes to touch them, you know? Like that scene where he’s cutting his hair and Seth Rogen says he looks like Patrick Swayze and he remarks that Swayze’s dead. That’s the kind of thing that cuts both ways at the same time. That’s real.

I think that now we as screenwriters and directors have to be audacious to move forward, you know? Because we have seen a lot of movies and we know we could make this movie without any humour at all. It could be just like My Left Foot, which is a great movie, but now we have to find new ways to tell these stories. We are lucky because right now in France, actually, cinema is moving forward quite a lot. It’s shaking and shifting and a new generation is coming. We are all tackling harder issues today than ever before. I mean, there will always be the blockbusters and American sequels, and that works all around the world, but we should always be striving to break new ground.

DS: You guys were already familiar with working with Omar, so he knew what to expect, but he also has to form this bond with François. What did they do to sort of build that bond between them?

ON: We sort of had them go through an orientation period where they traveled to see Philippe, and the first time they met was at the airport on the way there for four days. Francois knew that we all knew each other very well and that we were from the same generation and that all of us joked around a lot. At the beginning Francois sort of said to himself that maybe he should feel on the outside of all of this, like it was them and me, but then we told him to come out and join us. Immediately when he did we could tell the link between them was just electric. Francois wanted to play with Omar and try different things, and Omar was very touched by that because Francois is a big, big actor in France and really respected. It was a great thing to see. Neither of them wanted to take the rug out from under the other one. They loved to share and to play and act, and Francois is a very easy and humble person to talk to. The first time we met him he said he knew that he can give life to the film and that he knew immediately that it was a film for Omar. He knew it without us telling him. It was great for a big actor like that to be able to accept that.

DS: But it also helps that Francois role is also a great part. It’s also a lot more physical of a role than most people probably realize since he can’t rely on gesturing to get his point across.

ON: That’s where all of your emotions. I mean, I talk with my hands a lot and most people like myself can’t understand what it would be like to only be able to communicate using your face. But only one time ever during rushes did we ever see Francois break character by wiggling his fingers, and it wasn’t a useable take, anyway. It never happened. I asked him how he could do it and he never really told me. Even in scenes where Omar has to pick him up and physically move him, he would remain still and stiff over the course of five or six takes each. It was a great experience for all of us to see.

source: http://dorkshelf.com/2012/05/28/interview-olivier-nakache-eric-tolenado

[Guest farstrep]

08/03/2012 04:58 PM

Coping with Paralysis

'If There Is a God, He Is Certainly Not to Blame'

Samuel Koch became paralyzed on live television. Philippe Pozzo di Borgo's story was the basis for the hit film "The Intouchables." They spoke with SPIEGEL about solitude, how friendliness can be a powerful tool and how jokes about the disabled can still be funny.

It's the first time the two have met: Samuel Koch and Philippe Pozzo di Borgo are having dinner together in a Munich hotel while Germany plays Italy in the European Football Championship. They talk and laugh a lot, and despite their 37-year age difference and vastly different backgrounds, they have a lot to say to each other. Koch and Pozzo di Borgo are two men who have suffered the same bitter fate.

Philippe Pozzo di Borgo, 61, whose autobiography served as the basis for the hit film "The Intouchables," comes from an old, aristocratic French family and was, as he says, "born with a silver spoon" in his mouth. As the offspring of the counts of Pozzo di Borgo and the Marquis de Vogüé, he grew up in castles and manors. He attended the best schools in France and worked as a manager at Moët & Chandon before eventually becoming the director of the equally famous brand Pommery. It was a champagne life.

In 1993, at the age of 42, he broke his spine in a paragliding accident. He wasn't paying enough attention on that day, he later said when explaining what caused the accident. He had been forced to close a subsidiary in Switzerland and dismiss many workers, and he wasn't in very good spirits. Three years later, his wife Béatrice died after a long battle with cancer. Pozzo di Borgo sank into a depression from which his caregiver, whose story was highlighted in the film, helped him emerge. Today Pozzo di Borgo lives in Morocco, where the climate is beneficial to his health, with his second wife Khadija.

Pozzo di Borgo had a hobby that he believed he had mastered and used to smoke hand-rolled cigarettes and listen to loud music on his Walkman while hovering in the air with his paraglider.

Koch, for his part, was a daredevil from an early age. Now 24, he started gymnastics at six, and later on there was hardly a sport or outdoor activity he hadn't tried, including bungee jumping. Koch achieved fame in Germany for all the wrong reasons on Dec. 4, 2010. During an appearance on the hit German game show called "Wetten, dass…?", in which contestents perform various outrageous stunts, Koch had planned to jump over five cars driving towards him using Poweriser jumping stilts. On live television, he failed, smashing into the roof of one of the cars, which was being driven by his father, and landing awkwardly. He has been paralyzed from the neck down since then.

Hard Time Saying No

The accident came just as Koch had figured out what he wanted to do with his life. He had been accepted by the prestigious University of Music, Drama and Media in the northern German city of Hanover. The bet that he had been negotiating with the ZDF television network for months suddenly became less important to him, Koch writes in his book "Zwei Leben" (Two Lives). Nevertheless, he says, he didn't want to withdraw from the show at the last minute. He doesn't like conflict, he adds, and has a hard time saying no.

Both men are so-called tetraplegics, which means that their arms and legs are paralyzed. They can only move their heads, and even that range of motion is limited. Koch also retains some control over his right hand. It's one of the most severe forms of paralysis.

When the two men, in their wheelchairs, are returning to their hotel rooms after dinner, they engage in a duel of politeness in front of the elevator. There is only room for one wheelchair in the elevator, and each of them insists that other one go first. Finally, Koch puts an end to the standoff by driving his electric wheelchair toward Pozzo di Borgo's wheelchair and giving it a small nudge.

"We're tired," Pozzo di Borgo says the next morning, as he is being pushed into the room where the interview is taking place. Koch also complains of tiredness. As is so often the case, both men spent a painful night and had difficulty sleeping. "Let's start quickly and take advantage of the time," says Pozzo di Borgo. The wheelchairs are positioned so that they can both look at each other comfortably without having to turn their heads too much to the side. A French interpreter is sitting next to them. "You never know how long our bodies will play along," says Pozzo di Borgo. "In that respect, we tetraplegics are unpredictable," he adds with a smile.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Koch, did you like the film "The Intouchables?"

Koch: Yes, of course. But that could also be because I can relate to the subject matter, at least indirectly.

SPIEGEL: Does the film paint a realistic picture of life as a tetraplegic?

Koch: I recognized a lot of things. But in some places, where everyday life becomes critical, complicated and not very pretty, the film was skillfully edited. In one scene, for example, the protagonist Philippe is standing in front of the aircraft and then, suddenly, the camera cuts to him strapped into the plane. It's the same with clothing, when the camera suddenly cuts to him wearing a different outfit. I wish things went that quickly in real life. In my experience, it can sometimes take half an hour.

SPIEGEL: Which scene did you particularly like?

Koch: "No arms, no chocolate." Philippe's caregiver says that to him while holding some chocolate in front of his face. I thought that was really amusing, especially since close friends and family members say similar things to me.

SPIEGEL: Isn't that cruel and mean?

Koch: Yes, perhaps both. But I think it's funny. "No arms, no chocolate" -- that's just the way it is. Why should we whitewash things?

SPIEGEL: What other scenes did you identify with?

Koch: I was especially moved by the scene in which Philippe is in so much pain at night that he's practically jumping out of his skin. It shows him cramping up and literally tossing and turning inside, because he can't actually toss and turn, until his caregiver takes him on a walk around the city to distract him. I also often experience such nights filled with pain. Luckily, I've also had friends and caregivers who, like in the film, weren't above carrying me out to the beach at 3 a.m.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Pozzo di Borgo, how did you find out about what happened to Samuel Koch?

Pozzo di Borgo: A German TV crew visited me in Morocco, where I live. They told me about Samuel and asked me to say a few words of comfort to him on camera.

SPIEGEL: Then you felt the need to get in touch with Samuel directly, and you talked on the phone a few times. What do you discuss with each other?

Pozzo di Borgo: We talk about new things, tricks of the trade, things to help us in our jobs in the paralysis industry. You know, we have a challenging job that requires very special training. It's helpful to share tricks with one another.

Koch: When I met Philippe last night for the first time, it was very pleasant. He knows exactly what it means to lie awake for nights at a time, tormented by phantom pain. He knows what it means to be unable to breathe on your own, and how it feels to be suctioned and to be unable to speak. He's already been through all the things I've experienced or will experience. Somehow that created a certain sense of familiarity right away. Other people can't really relate to that so well.

SPIEGEL: What can you learn from Philippe?

Koch: When I was in the rehab clinic, they constantly told me: Samuel, you can't always be so polite and friendly. Go ahead and push people around. After all, it's about your life. But that goes against my nature. When I saw Philippe for the first time yesterday evening, I immediately noticed how affectionate he is with the people around him. And how, in his apparent helplessness, he's still helpful. I asked him if he had ever been unfriendly. No, he said, not once in his 19 years in a wheelchair. His reasons were pragmatic. We need the people around us, we depend on them, he said. That's why it's smarter to be nice to them. For me, it was a very important validation, an excellent example and proof that it is actually possible to be friendly, and that it even helps you.

SPIEGEL: What else can you convey to Samuel, given your almost 20 years of experience as a paralytic?

Pozzo di Borgo: Oh, I don't think there's a whole lot I can convey to Samuel. I'd much rather convey something to you, you and all other non-disabled people.

'We Can Be of Use to Other Wheelchair Users'
SPIEGEL: Go ahead.

Pozzo di Borgo: I think that we disabled people shouldn't be the only ones who are friendly. In fact, all people are dependent on one another. We all need each other. If the non-disabled were also friendlier, both to us and to each other, the world would be a more pleasant place. Kindness is good for everyone.

SPIEGEL: You were 42 when you broke your spine in a paragliding accident. How do you think you would have coped with it if you had had the accident at Samuel's age?

Pozzo di Borgo: For a young man like Samuel, it's a great deal more difficult to come to terms with such a blow, much more difficult than for me. I had already led a first, great life, an active, successful life in the business world as a champagne industry executive, for 20 years. At 42, it's certainly easier to come to terms with a second and totally different life than at 23. I was certainly more fortunate than Samuel. It's better to get into the disabled business at a more mature age. On the other hand, he now has a higher life expectancy than I do. The younger you are when you have the accident, the better the body adjusts to it. I'm not worried about him.

SPIEGEL: Do you agree, Mr. Koch, that Philippe was more fortunate?

Koch: Of course, age does make a difference. But I don't think that you can say which of us is happier or unhappier now. Calamities can't be categorized. It always depends on how the individual deals with it. For some people, being separated from their parents can be much more painful than paralysis is for others.

SPIEGEL: You had just moved away from your parents and started living an independent life. Then you had to return home because you needed care. Of all unfavorable moments, was it the most unfavorable?

Koch: It's true that I was full of motivation and just about to get my life going when all that was suddenly cut short. Although it's never a good time for something like this, it was and still is a pretty bitter experience. On the other hand, I had also spent 20 years having a really great childhood and youth, and I'm thankful for the wonderful time I was able to have.

Samuel Koch's father Christoph is sitting on a chair two meters away, listening to the conversation and observing Samuel, including the posture of his head and his facial expressions. Occasionally he gets up and holds a water bottle with a straw in front of his son's chin, so that he can drink. Later on, he massages Samuel's neck muscles. Pozzo di Borgo proves to be an avid coffee drinker, as he had told us before the interview. He drinks his coffee through a straw.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Koch, millions of Germans witnessed your accident on live television. And Mr. Pozzo di Borgo, more than eight million Germans and more than 20 million people in France watched the film version of your story. You are both among the most prominent paralytics in Germany. Is this a blessing or a curse?

Pozzo di Borgo: More of a blessing. Perhaps, because of our celebrity, we can be of use to other wheelchair users, and perhaps even for the non-disabled. I have nothing against being the clown of the system. It's okay. I've always been convinced that we have a responsibility, no matter what state of health we're in.

Koch: For me it's both. I already feel uncomfortable when I'm sitting alone in my room, in my wheelchair, and can't move. And I really feel this sense of discomfort when I go outside and other people are looking at me. It's even worse when cameras are pointed at me. But as Philippe said: If this publicity does some good or is somehow productive, it helps you cope a little with the senselessness of this sort of accident, if only because it has led to something meaningful in other respects.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Pozzo di Borgo, do you feel uncomfortable when you're lying in your wheelchair and others are looking at you?

Pozzo di Borgo: I was 42 when I got into this thing. You acquire a certain maturity after a while. I really don't care what people think about me. It's like this: Our society places a great deal of value on things like youth and performance, and being athletic and full of energy. That's why many people have trouble coping with the fact that we've been slowed down so much and that we have so little ability to react. People are afraid of us. The only thing we can do is to seduce them, with our smiles and with our humor. Once we've made the connection, we're home free. Touch us!

SPIEGEL: How do you make that connection?

Pozzo di Borgo: Whenever a woman approaches me, I ask her to give me a hug. I ask men to shake my hand. It's a way to reassure people, because they're afraid of their own weakness.

SPIEGEL: Do you also feel that people are awkward around you?

Koch: Yes, of course. I try to react the way Philippe does. I just say: "Kisses are welcome." Or something like that.

SPIEGEL: What sorts of awkwardness do you observe when people try to interact with you?

Koch: The classic one is the outstretched hand hanging in front of my face. The hand just sits there and sits there, until the other person starts to blush in embarrassment, because he realizes that I can't return the handshake.

Pozzo di Borgo: In Paris, I occasionally fall out of my wheelchair. Then I say to people: Would you please put me back in my wheelchair? But no one touches me. We usually have to wait for the fire department to arrive. But that's part of what I call my "job."

Koch: Some people talk to me as if I weren't just physically but also mentally disabled. They bend down to my level and ask, carefully articulating every word: "C-a-n y-o-u u-n-d-e-r-s-t-a-n-d t-h-e w-o-r-d-s t-h-a-t a-r-e c-o-m-i-n-g o-u-t o-f m-y m-o-u-t-h?" Then I say: Of course I can. What's wrong with you? Why are you talking like that? It certainly happens that people associate mental disability with a wheelchair. But I can't say that I was better able to make the distinction when I could still walk.

SPIEGEL: What about you, when you could still walk?

Pozzo di Borgo: I was so successful, so fast and so driven that I didn't even notice other people. I didn't see that there are people who live in a different rhythm. In a sense, I needed the blow to my head to be able to stop, and to understand what's really going on.

SPIEGEL: Jokes keep popping up in the books you've both written. You have almost a humoristic take on your situation. Do you have a favorite joke about paralytics?

Pozzo di Borgo: Do you know where to find a paralytic?

SPIEGEL: No.

Pozzo di Borgo: Back where you left him.

Koch: Yeah, that's a good one.

SPIEGEL: Are the disabled the only ones who can crack disabled jokes?

'I'm Constantly Afraid I Will Be Left Alone in a Corner'
Koch: Not necessarily.

Pozzo di Borgo: If it's a good joke I'll accept it, no matter who makes it.

SPIEGEL: The film about your life is also bursting with self-irony. "I would shoot myself," Abdel, the caregiver, says to Philippe, who replies: "That, too, is difficult for a paralytic." How is it that you can laugh about your fate?

Pozzo di Borgo: Humor is also a tool. You know, I'm constantly afraid that I'll be left alone, sitting in a corner. Because I no longer have the physical strength to convince you to help me, I just make you laugh. Then, you'll pay attention to me. The escape into humor is also a pragmatic way of dealing with our situation. And it's better for everyone involved.

Koch: There's a German poet named Ringelnatz who said: "Humor is the button that prevents us from bursting." There's a lot of truth to that. Besides, laughing is more fun than crying, at least for me.

SPIEGEL: Neither of you mince words when describing the condition of your bodies. You, Mr. Koch, write: "My hands hang there like the dead tentacles of an octopus." And in your book, Mr. Pozzo di Borgo, you write: "Pozzo has lost his virility. He's become the leaning tower of Pisa, always tilting to one side or the other." Why do you write so harshly about yourselves?

Pozzo di Borgo: Because you have to be honest about things. We're not in a movie theater here.

Koch: Naturally, most people can't imagine how it feels to have such broken limbs that just hang there, or what it's like to fall over, like some tower without a foundation. Parables or metaphors can help convey to others how disgusting or gruesome the situation can be.

Pozzo di Borgo: That's the important message Samuel and I have. You can remove yourself from even the most difficult situation if you can clearly name your fate, and if you've accepted it. But only then.

SPIEGEL: In a speech you gave when you celebrated your 60th birthday, you said that you were celebrating "42 healthy and 18 disabled years, each of which counts as seven, the way it is with dogs." What brought you to that comparison?

Pozzo di Borgo: When I was young and healthy, I had the impression that I would be young forever. Since I've been disabled, I appreciate every second. Besides, it's much more strenuous to live one year as a disabled person than seven years as a healthy person.

"Does anyone mind if I stretch my legs?" Koch asks carefully. He has been sitting in his wheelchair with his legs at an angle. "Please," replies Pozzo di Borgo. "I've been lying here comfortably the whole time." His shoulder keeps twitching, an external sign of the inner pain that torments Pozzo di Borgo day and night. But his face doesn't reveal the pain; instead, it remains friendly the whole time.

SPIEGEL: How do you see it now? Was there a reason for your accidents?

Pozzo di Borgo: If there is a God, he's certainly not to blame. He didn't want it. It's bad luck, a mishap, a mistake we made or an accident, but it's also an opportunity for us. Perhaps we were somewhat on the wrong path, and that's been corrected. That would be sort of a reason. At any rate, I'm not angry with anyone because of my accident, and I don't blame anyone, be it on earth or in heaven. I try to make the best out of it.

Koch: Philippe always has these incredibly intelligent responses, completely to the point. I like that. Unfortunately, I can't really see a reason for my accident. But I do believe that God can also fix a bad situation, that is, that he can straighten out a crooked path, and that I too will be able to see some sense in all of this over time.

SPIEGEL: Do you think it's okay that 60 milliseconds, as in your accident, can determine whether someone will live his life as a gymnast or as a wheelchair user?

Koch: No, fate is a stupid thing. (He chuckles.)

SPIEGEL: You have said that you were thinking of Psalm 23 as you ran toward the car in "Wetten, dass…?" "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want." Do you say today that psalms are nonsense?

Koch: No, not at all.

SPIEGEL: Shortly after your accident, you asked yourself: "What if God doesn't want me to be able to walk again?" What do you think today: Does God want you to be able to walk again?

Koch: God undoubtedly wants physical integrity for everyone. However, I believe that he has a different list of priorities than I do. Apparently other things are more important to him than my being able to move -- unfortunately.

SPIEGEL: What about you, Mr. Pozzo di Borgo: Did you become religious as a result of your accident?

Pozzo di Borgo: Before my accident, I had a center of gravity that moved between my head and the area below my belt. Since the accident, this center has moved upward, and now it's between my heart and heaven. Spirituality has become essential to me, as a disabled person. What distinguishes Christianity from many other religions is that it isn't necessarily a divine hand that decides everything, but that God wants us to be free people who assume responsibility. It would be good if the center of thought in our society would move a little higher up, especially above the waistline.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Koch, you even performed your jump on "Wetten, dass…?" with a blindfold. Do you now think, in retrospect, that you were perhaps tempting fate?

Koch: No, I didn't tempt fate. People do riskier things every day. I myself have done much less controlled things in daily gymnastics training. Maybe the jump with my eyes blindfolded could even have succeeded if I had focused more on the routine performance of the exercise. But it's boring to think about that now.

Pozzo di Borgo: I'm speaking for myself now, not for Samuel. I engaged in a very dangerous sport, paragliding, a high-risk sport. Our society encourages this sort of thing. We seek that feeling of strength, the extreme experience. And, in fact, you do think of yourself as immortal and indestructible. But the search for that feeling of strength, and the belief that we are indestructible, these are absurdities of the modern age. An accident like this puts things back in perspective, sometimes a little brutally.

SPIEGEL: Do you keep up with advances in spinal research, in the hope that you'll be able to walk again?

Koch: I'd like to preserve the hope of being able to walk again one day. But I don't spend every day obsessively searching for results of the latest research. When Philippe signed a copy of his book for me, he wrote: "Stick in the present!" For the time being, I'm living in the here and now. It isn't easy, because you face a fundamental question: Do I invest a huge amount of time in training, in optimizing my condition, or do I live completely in the present and allow the physical to run its course? At the moment, I'm trying to develop a mixture of the two.

Pozzo di Borgo: Although Samuel is disabled, he's also one of the greatest athletes around. He has extraordinary discipline. He's a champion. We paralytics are champions of immobility. We are forced to display tremendous discipline. I've been doing exercises every day for 19 years, and I have to be very disciplined about my nutrition. This is absolutely necessary to be able to sustain yourself and survive.

SPIEGEL: Is the hope for a cure, or at least an improvement, important to you, Mr. Pozzo di Borgo?

Pozzo di Borgo: I don't believe that I'll be able to walk again one day. When Christopher Reeve, the actor who played Superman, became a paralytic he said that he would be able to walk again in five years. He didn't make it, and he disappointed a lot of people, especially the disabled. But he also generated hundreds of millions for research. Samuel could very well be part of the first generations to benefit from this research. In nanotechnology, for example, they're working on the development of exoskeletons, and on conducting impulses directly from the brain to the muscles.

SPIEGEL: Do you welcome any form of research?

Pozzo di Borgo: I was once offered a robot that would feed me. They came to the hospital with the machine, and to annoy them I said: "I only eat peas." Of course, the peas never made it to my mouth. Then I asked the people: Who exactly placed the plate with the peas on the machine? The woman from the kitchen did it, they said. Then I said: I prefer that woman over the machine. Technology shouldn't be allowed to isolate the disabled, and it can't be an excuse for healthy people to say: We gave you a machine, and now you're on your own.

SPIEGEL: You once expressed the wish: "Pull the plug on me! Just don't ask anything more of me. I don't have any strength left." What sort of a moment was that?

Pozzo di Borgo: In the first year, there's almost always a moment of discouragement. But in my case the real low point came much later. I only felt truly disabled three years later, when my beloved wife Béatrice died. With her death, I suddenly became lonely, and loneliness is the worst thing of all. I also know about a lot of people who aren't in a wheelchair and commit suicide, because they're very lonely and they haven't found a purpose. It's almost always the others, our fellow human beings, who give us a purpose. That's why my therapy concept is not to be alone.

'Women Aren't Afraid of Fragility'
Koch: Being in society is a life-saving measure for us. That's why it's so important that people are not afraid of us and actually like to approach us. Hugging and kissing, for example, keeps us alive. But we have to create the conditions for that ourselves. In the hospital, I was told that there were now three possibilities for my development. First, I could let myself go completely, lose all interest, see nothing but suffering, isolate myself and eventually become lonely. The second option looked like this: The need to constantly communicate everything could easily lead to my dictating things to others, which would eventually turn me into a tyrant, and that too would ultimately lead to loneliness. The third possibility sounded the most appealing: You accept yourself as you are, and you become happy as a result.

We take a break. The two men eat a snack. Koch switches his wheelchair to the prone position for a short time so that he can relax. Now Pozzo di Borgo's second wife Khadiya, who he met in Morocco nine years ago, enters the room. Wijdane, the couple's biological child, jumps around the room with her long pigtails, climbs up onto the wheel of her father's wheelchair, hugs him and cuddles with him. Later on, she climbs up into Koch's wheelchair and kisses him on the cheek. The little five-year-old girl displays the uninhibited approach to paralytics that both men would like to see in others.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Pozzo di Borgo, in your book, you describe at length the important role physical closeness, desire and sex played in your life. How has that been since your accident?

Pozzo di Borgo: Unfortunately the accident makes you lose your sexuality. The first thing they offered me in the hospital after my accident was a talk with a sex therapist. Today they've cut budgets, and the first position they've eliminated in that of sex therapist. But the sudden loss of sexuality is a big problem for those involved. It's a completely banal neurological consequence of the accident that you lose this world of emotion and experiences. I had the great fortune to be married to women who came to terms with the loss of my sexuality. Women already have a great advantage, in that they have more reason and sense than men. They're more adaptable.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Koch, how did you cope with this loss of sexuality?

Koch: Even before the accident, I had made a deal with myself to concentrate only on my future wife and to avoid all possible -- or impossible -- liaisons, so that I could conservatively, or naïvely, wait for the right one. The accident helps me a little more with that resolution.

Pozzo di Borgo: How sensible! Fantastic!

SPIEGEL: Hardly anyone can rhapsodize more enthusiastically about women than you, Mr. Pozzo di Borgo. You say, for example: "The magic of a woman soothes me," or "Thanks to women, I survived." What is it about women that makes you so enthusiastic?

Pozzo di Borgo: Women aren't as afraid of fragility. They're not afraid when they see me. They're completely natural.

SPIEGEL: You describe yourself before the accident as greedy, egoistic and ambitious. Do you regret today that you were like that?

Pozzo di Borgo: Good question. If I had known what would happen, I would have behaved differently. But there's so much noise in our society, so much movement, that you usually don't even see reality. I often say that I would like to return to the world of the healthy and of business, but under one condition: that I can return with my baggage as a disabled person.

SPIEGEL: You, Mr. Koch, write about Samuel, when he was healthy: "I was quite an richard simmons for a while." What do you regret?

Koch: "Je ne regrette rien," although I'm not proud of everything, either. But of course I've had a lot of time to reflect since the accident, and would certainly do a few things differently today. But I wouldn't say that someone who has suffered such a stroke of fate necessarily becomes a deeper person. Someone in rehab said to me: "He who was an richard simmons before the accident is still an richard simmons after the accident."

Pozzo di Borgo: Very good!

SPIEGEL: You say that you recognized the harshness of the system as a result of your accident. What exactly do you mean?

Pozzo di Borgo: We are in an achievement-oriented society, and I was one of the high achievers. But the standards have become so high that many people capitulate and are sidelined. There are fewer and fewer people who are still in the system, and more and more who are forced to the edges. The financial crisis, which was really just a logical consequence of all this absurdity, has accelerated this development. People suffer from neuroses, they've become introverted, they are no longer able to cope, and they become excluded or feel excluded. Mankind has lost the meaning of life.

SPIEGEL: Has your view of our society changed, Mr. Koch?

Koch: I've suddenly gained insight into areas that I had no idea about before. I now know what still needs to be improved, even in such a model social welfare state as Germany, not to mention other countries. It would take us less than a day's journey to end up in places where Philippe and I wouldn't have survived after our accidents.

SPIEGEL: Is it fair to say that you've gone from being a big capitalist to a critic of capitalism?

Pozzo di Borgo: I was always suspicious of capitalism, especially financial capitalism, which destroys values. The champagne company I managed was very German in some ways. All employees were involved, unions were represented on the supervisory board and employees had a lot of say. But when we were bought out by a financial investor, he decided that all profits would go into his pocket from then on. The first thing he told me to do was to lay off half of my employees. I had my accident shortly after that.

SPIEGEL: Do you believe there's a connection?

Pozzo di Borgo: Absolutely. I was very distracted during my fateful flight, and I wasn't myself, partly because I sensed that I didn't want to be part of that sort of a system anymore.

Koch: Even before the accident, I had decided not to pursue a sensible profession with the prospect of making a lot of money. Money and power were not among my ideals, because both are so fleeting. The accident only reinforced my beliefs.

SPIEGEL: We live in a nervous time where things move faster and faster. Does this pace exclude you, the people who move at a slower pace?

Koch: Perhaps it's more that we represent the counterweight on the scale and help slow things down. But I don't really feel excluded. I'm here in Munich today, and I was in Berlin the day before yesterday. But I think it's also important to pause sometimes and come to rest -- which I probably only discovered because I had to.

SPIEGEL: You resumed your studies at the University of Music, Drama and Media in Hanover in April. What have your first experiences been like?

Koch: The university has opened up new perspectives for me, ones that I hadn't anticipated. It's affiliated with the Institute of Journalism and Communication, where I'm also allowed to attend lectures. At the moment, it's more of an orientation and even an experiment for all of us, the instructors, my fellow students and me. It's really enjoyable to once again be around the people and in the environment that I had once become so fond of.

SPIEGEL: German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has been in a wheelchair for more than 20 years, and has been in the top echelons of politics that whole time. Is he a role model for other disabled people?

Koch: I think so. I was in the German parliament building recently, where everything is nicely wheelchair-accessible. He's apparently done a lot when it comes to removing barriers, and even with some very pragmatic things. It's also very important that, despite his disability, he doesn't allow himself to be disabled and actively participates in life; not just his own, but also in the lives of 82 million Germans. You can hardly be more active than that.

SPIEGEL: How difficult do you think it is for a wheelchair user to wield the influence that he does?

Koch: It certainly takes a lot of strength, even though Schäuble isn't quite as disabled as the two of us. There is definitely a difference between being a paraplegic and a tetraplegic, like we are. We can't even use our hands in a functional way, which means that we need help with everything. At least Schäuble can eat on his own, write, read books, open a door and scratch his nose. I would be so ecstatic if I had only one hand. I think Philippe feels the same way.

Pozzo di Borgo: I'd be grateful for so much as a finger.

SPIEGEL: Would you like to see more disabled people in leadership positions?

Pozzo di Borgo: It's extremely important for disability to be reflected in everyday life in our society. When you place a wheelchair into a gathering, you create team spirit. The wheelchair creates social cohesion, in politics, in companies, in associations, in the family, wherever. Besides, a disabled person is twice as capable and clever as someone standing on two legs.

Koch: Naturally.

Pozzo di Borgo: If not three times better.

Koch: I heard that the brain of the tetraplegic, like the hearing of a blind person, can develop into a high-performance processor. Where sensitivity is missing, as it is in our bodies, it's simply concentrated somewhere else.

SPIEGEL: What did you learn from your caregiver Abdel, a petty criminal from the suburbs who came to you almost directly from prison?

Pozzo di Borgo: He helped me regain courage and the enjoyment of life, after I became severely depressed following the death of my wife. I, the aristocrat, was exposed to a new world through him, the world of the banlieue, the social hot spots, places where people are marginalized. I wasn't familiar with any of that before. You can't leave these people on the margins of society.

SPIEGEL: Abdel, for his part, says this about you: "Without Pozzo, I would probably be dead or in prison." In capitalism, they'd probably call it a win-win situation.

Pozzo di Borgo: Absolutely. Although I wouldn't be in prison without Abdel, I could very well be dead.

SPIEGEL: How is Abdel today? What's your relationship like?

Pozzo di Borgo: We see each other regularly. He's a businessman now, a successful chicken farmer. He's married, has three children and has gained 30 kilos.

SPIEGEL: Thirty kilos? Then he's doing well.

Pozzo di Borgo: Yes, very well. I'm always so happy to see him again. But he's still crazy.

SPIEGEL: In the film, Philippe says: "The boys from the banlieue have no pity. That's exactly what I want. No pity!" What's the worst thing about pity?

Pozzo di Borgo: Pity doesn't heal. When someone weeps for me, he's actually weeping for himself, and we can't all start weeping. For healthy people, pity is a way of protecting themselves, but it doesn't do me any good.

Koch: Pity doesn't do anyone any good. Compassion is better. I think it's sweet when little children say: "Wow, you really have it good. You never have to eat on your own, you never have to go anywhere and you never have to get dressed yourself. You really have a cushy life. I wish I had that." That's what I like. But there are also those, who are not children, who say: "It's really not all that bad. You're doing well. You're a public figure and you're well known. After all, that's what you wanted!" That, of course, is nonsense and the opposite of compassion. It doesn't lead to productive cooperation.

SPIEGEL: Philippe, you too dream of "cooperation between upright and prone members of the human race," as you write in your autobiography. What is your vision?

Pozzo di Borgo: It can't work if there is too much pressure, and if the demands of our system contradict human nature. It isn't just the physically disabled who fall by the wayside because of the pace of things. Others are also increasingly unable to stand up to the pressure. Now I ask you: What exactly is the logic behind a system that leads to such exclusion? There's a suicidal aspect to it all. We ought to bring people back into the system. If disabled people managed to return a little of that common sense to healthy people, I'd be very happy.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Koch, Mr. Pozzo di Borgo, thank you for this interview.

Interview conducted by Markus Feldenkirchen

source: http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/an-interview-with-samuel-koch-and-philippe-pozzo-di-borgo-on-paralysis-a-846855.html

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class="title-news" 'The Intouchables' Directors: Racist Criticisms 'So Dumb'

Moviefone Canada  |  By Rick Mele Posted: 06/01/2012 11:21 am Updated: 06/01/2012 11:21 am

Already a massive success in its native France, where it became the second-highest grossing French film of all-time, The Intouchables is finally making its way across the Atlantic. From directors Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache, the real-life-inspired story follows an unlikely friendship between two men, one a rich quadriplegic (Francois Cluzet), the other a Senegalese immigrant (Omar Sy) who becomes his caretaker. Sy won a César (the French equivalent of an Oscar) for his role in the charming comedy, becoming the first black actor to do so, and in the process, he beat out the eventual Oscar-winner himself, The Artist's Jean Dujardin.

The heartfelt buddy movie clearly touched a nerve in France, inspiring a passionate debate with its issues of immigration and social marginalization becoming talking points in the French media and even the French presidential elections. But while the film was branded progressive in France, in the United States an early review from Variety accused it of containing the "kind of Uncle Tom racism one hopes has permanently exited American screens."

It's a comparison that seems deeply unfair when you watch The Intouchables, and one that Toledano and Nakache simply don't understand. While the two were in Toronto promoting the film's Canadian release, I spoke to them about The Intouchables' international success, North American hopes, and why those criticisms are so wildly off-base.

So, the movie is based on a true story. For those not familiar with the background, where did the story come from?
Olivier Nakache: We saw a documentary on TV, the name was In Life, Death. It's more about Philippe [Pozzo di Borgo] than Abdel [sellou], about the life of a quadriplegic, and about his wife, his family, about his accident. And we found in a special moment of this documentary, the very critical relationship between Abdel and Philippe; for us, it was a discovery. The story was funny, it was tough, it was very deep. And we decided to make a movie about them.

What about their relationship made you want to turn their story into a movie?
Eric Toledano: It moved us. It was a special thing. These two guys, it was their audacious and non-politically-correct sense of humor that was so special, because it was such an important part of their relationship. When we met the two guys, Philippe told us that if it weren't for that sense of humor, he would've died.

When you a chose a subject, there are always the same subjects in cinema, love, friendship. We have no revolutionary new suggestions, it's always approximately the same. What is changing though, is the angle. When we discovered the subject of The Intouchables, we just saw for example, My Left Foot, the movie with Daniel Day-Lewis, he won the Oscar for it. It's a beautiful story, but it's approximately the same story. The new angle for us, as directors, is to highlight the humor in the center of the relationship. We tried to take a [familiar] subject and to give it a new angle, to inject new fire into the story. And our fire was to find the humor in a deep and difficult situation.

I think that optimism is a big part of the movie's charm. Why do you think it's important to be optimistic in a situation like Philippe's?
ON: Because of real life. Like you said, we worked to make an optimistic film, one with hope. Because the true situation is very tough: two lonely guys, both handicapped, one socially, one physically, but together they find hope. One reconnects the other to his [future] wife, which is in fact, a true story. And we liked this way of thinking. You can find hope in very tough situations. The real Philippe, he's very optimistic, he's always tried to be in good spirits.

Was Omar Sy always your first choice to play Driss?
ET: Yes. Definitely.

ON: Definitely. Totally. If he didn't want to make this movie, we wouldn't have made it. [The movie] really was for him. Because it was time for us to find him a leading role in a movie. We made two movies with him before this one, and we wanted to make something special for him. So we wrote the script with him in mind.

And Francois Cluzet?
ON: Francois, no. We had another person we wrote for before, Daniel Auteuil. And after, we changed to Francois Cluzet. And we were very lucky that he accepted the part.

The two of them have such great chemistry together. Was that immediate, or was that something you developed through rehearsals?
ET: We have to describe who these people are in France. On one side we have Omar, who is on TV every night, for a TV show [SAV]. So he's very mainstream, but not very respected in the art movie community. And on the other side, we have Francois Cluzet, who is very famous and very high-brow, a very art house guy. They seemingly have nothing in common. So part of the marketing was to [play up on that]. When you go on the Metro and you see the poster, you say, "What are they doing together in a movie?" It's already weird and curious.

Did you have any idea the film would do as well as it has in France?
ET: It's impossible to understand, to ever predict a situation like this. It's very rare. It's impossible to think about these kind of proportions, it's almost inconceivable. We were in the storm; the journalists were calling us, the information channels, [then-French President Nicolas] Sarkozy. So we're just now coming out of the storm. Because we had the Césars, we had the theatrical release, the DVD release, foreign releases.

ON: Now we're going to quit and buy a bakery. [Laughs]

The movie seems to translate well outside of France, though, too. Did you see it as a universal story, or a specific commentary about French society?
ET: No, we saw a very universal story. Very early on, we knew that the film wasn't typical of French comedy or the French way of shooting. But we didn't expect these proportions, in Quebec now, the rest of Canada, in Italy, Spain, Korea, Greece, Israel, so many countries. Now it's no longer our responsibility, it's become more than us. It's surpassed us. It's become something special and very universal. For us, that's terrific.

And now with the North American audience, we're going to see what happens. Especially in the US, if they want to read subtitles or not. [Laughs] We're gonna see. Because The Artist didn't have subtitles, so ... we're gonna see.

Speaking of The Artist, do you think its success made it easier for French films to find North American audiences? Or was it sort of an anomaly? Since like you said, it doesn't have subtitles.
ET: It's not a subtitled movie, so it's a curiosity. I think many Americans thought it was an American movie, because it was, "The Weinstein Company presents." I think many people didn't know that it was a French movie.

And the Weinstein Company is planning on remaking The Intouchables for the US too, right? How do you feel about that?
ET: I feel good about it. We made the story, but for us, the job is almost over. It's also being remade in Italy. We hope that they are going to do a good job, but we trust in the Weinstein Company, we trust in Paul Feig [the rumoured director], we trust in Colin Firth if he does accept the role. If the story is enlarged, why not? We are not the guardians of the temple. We made this our job, and now we want to get out from the movie to do another one. And after that, to find a new goal and a new challenge. We are young.

Do you appreciate the dialogue the film has started, not just in France, but now in North America as well?
ET: Not everything. For example, the Variety review? No, we do not appreciate that, because I think that it wasn't very smart. I think, [it's] one against all the world. There are over 40 million people in Europe that didn't catch this kind of subtext. But in general, most of the dialogue, yes, we appreciate it, because it's talking about the real problems. The debate the movie created around disability, around the projects of Paris, it's a good debate, a good conversation. And even during the elections in France, people spoke about these problems because of the movie. So yes.

But the American reaction particularly, it's not very interesting for us. It's so far removed from our goal and our direction. It's so dumb, and a misunderstanding. You know, I used to say that this is a vestige of the political correctness of Americans. They don't want to say that and that and that, even if it's true. Sorry, my friend, if it's true that when you are black and in the projects you have less culture than a rich guy in the city center of Paris, this is just reality. They don't want to see reality. And if that is the case, I can do nothing for you. Life is changing, the world is changing. Sorry for them.

For me, at least, the movie had much more to do with class issues, than race.
ET: What is the point? This is a true story. We had some critics say, for example, many people say the guy in the wheelchair is very rich, and [so his condition] isn't the same as when you are not rich. But I'm not doing a movie about disability, I'm doing a movie about these two people. It happened like this: there is one rich, one poor. When you have commercial success, people want to make you political, make you a militant. We are not militants, we are just making movies. I'm not in politics, I'm a screenwriter.

source: http://news.moviefone.ca/2012/06/01/the-intouchables-directors-eric-toledano-olivier-nakache-interview_n_1562447.html

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May 3, 2012 | 12:21 pm

Meet the filmmakers of the French megahit “The Intouchables”

Posted by Naomi Pfefferman

These are heady times for the French-Jewish filmmakers Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache.  Harvey Weinstein snatched up the rights to their French-language odd couple dramedy, “The Intouchables,” following The Weinstein Company’s penchant for purchasing Gallic fare such as the Oscar-winning “The Artist” and “Sarah’s Key.”

“The Intouchables,” which spotlights the unlikely friendship between Philippe, a quadriplegic French aristocrat (François Cluzet) and Driss, his Muslim Senegalese caretaker (Omar Sy), proved to be the second-highest grossing film ever in France and Germany, where it’s done better box office than Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 – not to mention grossing $330 million worldwide, according to The Hollywood Reporter.  Plus the film scored a best actor Cesar for Sy, even beating out “The Artist’s “Jean Dujardin.  And now Hollywood has come calling, with “Bridesmaids’” Paul Feig signed on to direct an English-language version that may star Oscar-winner Colin Firth (“The King’s Speech”).

“This movie is…a funny, extremely entertaining illustration of how simple human connection transcends socioeconomic, religious and racial divides,” Weinstein said in a press release for the film, which opens in Los Angeles on May 25.

During a recent interview at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills, the affable filmmakers sat side by side at a vast conference table.  They said they didn’t intend their culture clash comedy to comment on the state of France’s attitudes towards Muslims (or even indirectly, the newer type of anti-Semitism generated by the kind of Islamic terrorists who committed the recent murders in Toulouse).  In fact, the perception many Americans have of their country as xenophobic is no longer correct, they said.  “I think that is the wrong image of France,” Toledano, 40, insisted, citing as an example the number of top French celebrities who come from diverse backgrounds, such as Sy.

For the filmmakers, “The Intouchables” is rather intended to further a new kind of cinematic hero.

“Our movie isn’t the typical Hollywood story of the healthy, big guy,” Toledano said.  “The hero of today is the hero we wanted to hide yesterday.  For example, people from the ghetto, people with paralysis – and we wanted to make them the heroes because we thought theirs is the most heroic story – more heroic than Superman or Jean Paul Belmondo.

“What Philippe and Driss have is a human relationship,” Toledano added.  “They have every possibility not to get along and yet they do get along.  It just goes beyond preconceptions because the odds for them to meet were almost none and yet they met and connected.”

Toledano and Nakache describe themselves as “two Sephardic boys;” both hail from families that fled North Africa – Toledano’s left Morocco when the Six Days War broke out in 1967, while Nakache’s left Algeria during a bloody civil war in 1962.

Growing up Jewish in Paris, Toledano said, ”We felt like the ‘others,’ but not more than blacks or Arabs. [The sentiment] was not especially against Jews, but when you grew up in France, people always asked you about where you were from if you’re not with a French name or a French face.”

Toledano was raised in a religiously observant family, speaks Hebrew, spent a year studying at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and has an uncle, Joseph Toledano, who is an Israel-based scholar of Sephardic Jewry.  Nakache said he was raised in a traditional home, and met Toledano when as teenagers both were leaders of a French Jewish youth group.

It was in their early 20s that they began making short films together:  “We made a deal,” Toledano said.  “We said alone, it will be difficult, so let’s do it together.”  After screening an early movie that turned out to be “a disaster,” Toledano and Nakache said, they made a successful short, “Small Shoes,” (1999) based on their own experience of playing Santa Claus for Christian families, a Yuletide tradition among Jewish and Muslim youths.

“Those Happy Days” (2006) was based on the Jewish summer camp Toledano and Nakache attended, though they chose to make the fictional setting non-denominational, with black and Arab as well as other campers.  In 2004, their critically acclaimed “I Prefer That We Remain Friends” (2004) starred Gerard Depardieu as a Jewish hypochondriac who, together with a younger male friend, go on a quest looking for love.  “Our stories are [often] very autobiographical,” Toledano explained.  “When we did this film we weren’t married; we were lonely single guys, so we told the story about two lonely guys of two different ages who are looking for wives together.  But by the end of the movie, they discover that their own friendship is better. That was our story at the time because then we didn’t find the girl, but now we are both married.”

“The Intouchables” came about after Toledano and Nakache saw a documentary, “In Life and Death,” about the real-life aristocrat, Philippe Pozzo de Borgo, and his caretaker, Abdel, who is actually from Algeria rather than Senegal. “It was a beautiful metaphor of life and how we need each other,” Toledano said of why he and Nakache were drawn to the story. “These are both extremely lonely people who have nothing in common – not culture, money, color or religion.  On paper they have no chance to have an accord.  But it’s a true story and when we spoke to them, they said, ‘We saved each others’ lives. If I hadn’t met the other one, now I’d be dead.’”

In the film, Philippe’s aide is renamed Driss; the filmmakers said they merged actor Omar Sy’s own story with Abdel’s to create the ex-con character who, we learn, was born in Senegal, sent to live with relatives in the France, raised in the ghetto projects on the outskirts of Paris, and has had run-ins with the law.

The movie went on to become a critical and box office hit in France – and also made headlines when far right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen said he saw “The Intouchables “as a representation of the progression that France is making – which he is vitally against,” according to a Weinstein Company press release.

“France is like this handicapped person stuck in this wheelchair, and we are going to have to wait for the help of these suburban youngsters and the immigration in general,” Le Pen said in a speech. “I don’t subscribe to this point of view….It would be a disaster if France would find itself in the same situation as this poor handicapped person.”

In response, Harvey Weinstein said: “It’s not a surprise to hear such an intolerant statement from the man who founded and was president of the extreme-right, xenophobic, racist National Front party. Le Pen made a repulsive statement, representing a bigoted worldview. And right now, Jean-Marie’s daughter, Marine Le Pen, is running for president of France as the leader of the National Front party—and she is fourth in the polls with almost 16% of the population intending to vote for her. That’s frightening to me, and I think it’s important to speak up and speak out against Le Pen and his ideas. That’s why I’m proud to bring ‘The Intouchables’ to American audiences. This movie is based on a true story, and it’s a funny, extremely entertaining illustration of how simple human connection trounces socioeconomic, religious and racial divides. “

“The Intouchables opens on May 25 in Los Angeles.

Source: http://www.jewishjournal.com/the_ticket/item/meet_the_filmmakers_of_the_french_megahit_the_intouchables_20120503

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by M. Faust

The Inoffenders

The Intouchables

The odds are pretty overwhelming that you will like the oddly titled French comedy-drama The Intouchables, about the relationship between a paralyzed rich man and the street-smart thief he hires as his caretaker. It’s already made more than $350 million internationally, and ranks as the second biggest hit in the history of the French film industry.

Viewers expressing their opinions on the internet are overwhelmingly positive: 92 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, 8.2/10 on MetaCritic, 8.6/10 on imdb. Chatter among the audience after the preview screening I attended was no different, with frequent use of the word “Oscar” (and not in sentences like, “My cousin Oscar will love this.”)

You may sense that I’m getting ready to disagree. Am I that predictable?

It may be based on a true story, but The Intouchables uses a fairly reliable movie template about two people bonding despite their considerable differences. Philippe (Tell No One’s François Cluzet), the scion of a wealthy family, has been paralyzed from the neck down since a paragliding accident. Since the death of his wife he has grown increasingly withdrawn. Driss (popular French star Omar Sy), who emigrated from Africa as a child, applies for a job as his caretaker only to get a signature on his unemployment form. He’s rude and obnoxious during the interview, so of course Philippe hires him.

Is that plausible? Wrong question. Philippe likes that Driss does not treat him with pity or even respect and guesses that he will be a tonic for his condition. And so he is, turning the house on end with music and dancing and propositioning the female staff. That he is barely able to tend to his charge is apparently incidental.

If this sounds mildly racist to you, there are critics who agree. Driss, we learn, has been in jail for six months, and lives with an oversized extended family in a housing project.

That’s not my problem with The Intouchables, which I found racist only to the degree that Driss is a bland stereotype (and no more so than Philippe, who listens to classical music and spends hours gazing at incomprehensible but valuable abstract paintings). Any racial questions are thrown into the blender at the film’s postscript, a shot of the two men on which the film was based, in which we see that the Driss character was an Algerian Arab.

My problem is that Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, who wrote and co-directed this, did such a clumsy job of bringing a can’t-miss story to life. The film is told almost entirely from Driss’s point of view, and there’s never any real tension between him and Philippe: Everything he does is accepted, and the characters never disagree in any but the most fleeting ways. Ancillary plot threads brought in to shore the story up are dropped, frustrating our hopes that they might reveal more about these characters.

The film is little more than a series of modestly amusing set pieces that work only if you overlook how ineptly they’re staged. (Driss interrupting the classical orchestra at Philippe’s birthday party to introduce everyone to Earth Wind and Fire would have been a great scene in 1977.) And the third act conflict, in which Philippe discharges Driss so that he can tend to his family, makes no sense: He’s better off going back to the streets than working at a well-paying job?

An American remake is already in the planning stages works, with director Paul Feig and Colin Firth to star along with Chris Rock, Jamie Foxx, or Idris Elba (though producer Harvey Weinstein reportedly wants a Latino actor in the part). I don’t know if it will be any better, but at least they should be able to do a proper job of using this standard feel-good formula.

But that’s just my opinion.

(Regarding the title: In French it’s Intouchables, which translates as “Untouchables.” As an idiom it doesn’t travel well, and while one can understand why they didn’t want to send it into American theaters as The Untouchables—is there any doubt that someone is eyeing a reboot of the Brian DePalma-Kevin Costner movie?—wouldn’t Les Intouchables have made more sense?)

source: http://artvoice.com/issues/v11n30/film_reviews

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Art work on the movie:


source: anzelmute.deviantart.com

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class="black" Interview: The Intouchables' François Cluzet & Omar Sy Source: Edward Douglas
May 21, 2012

Last November, a tiny French character dramedy called The Intouchables opened in France and over the next few months, it became one of the country's biggest blockbusters, grossing $166 million in French territories and then it doubled that amount when it opened in other countries.

Written and directed by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano who had already made a number of movies in France, though none that got any sort of attention here, the movie was based on the relationship of tetraplegic millionaire Philippe Pozzo di Borgo and the Algerian immigrant from the projects he hired to be his unlikely caretaker.

That true story has been converted into a hilarious and heartwarming comedy starring veteran French actor François Cluzet (Tell No One) as Philippe, joined by French comic Omar Sy as Driss, a Senagelese man from the projects who is just looking for his unemployment benefits after spending six months in prison for robbery. To Driss' surprise, he's hired on a one-month trial basis and as he learns the job and enjoys living in the lap of luxury, the two men become close friends as Driss helps Philippe to learn how to love living life again.

It's a wonderful film--you can read our review here--and it's absolutely no surprise that the film has become such a huge hit with European audiences. Earlier this year, ComingSoon.net had a chance to speak to the film's very different stars in separate interviews when they came through New York City--Cluzet when he came for the annual "Rendezvous with French Cinema" series at Lincoln Center and the IFC Center, and Omar Sy a few weeks later. Unfortunately, both interviews had to be done through a translator since both actors were more comfortable speaking in French.

First we have Cluzet, a veteran French dramatic actor who has been making films mainly in France for nearly three decades and who is already a huge star in France due to his role in films like the action-thriller Tell No One, for which he won the Cesar award.

ComingSoon.net: How did the directors approach you about doing this movie and was it very obvious from the script what they could do with it?
François Cluzet: The script was very well-written; it was a really original kind of story. The dialogue was very witty, there was a lot of humor in it. It was also possible to see how the adaptation worked from a documentary ("A La Vie, A La Mort") that had been made on the two characters when they had reunited.

CS: Because Philippe is based on a real person, as part of your preparation, did you want to meet him or spend any time with him?
Cluzet: I did meet him and I really did want to meet him, because I wanted to see what I could steal from him for the character. I think the thing that was most remarkable about him was his joie de vivre, his joy of life. He's somebody who really suffers a great deal but he hides it, and what you see is this joie de vivre.

CS: Were you able to meet him with his original caretaker Abdel?
Cluzet: No, he lives in Morocco, Philippe. The interesting thing about him was that he said, "If you want to live your life as a tetraplegic, that you can just die from the worry and from the problems of being paralyzed." What he was really interested in was having a life interacting with other people and making them interested in him and the way to do that was through humor.

CS: By the nature of playing a tetraplegic, you have to remain very still, did you have to do a lot of preparation for that or to get into that head?
Cluzet: It may sound modest, but it's really not that difficult to be still. There's a very specific head position that the character has and it's kind of a convention in films that if you say you're a quadriplegic or a tetraplegic, it's believed until you prove otherwise.

CS: I'm not sure how easy it is to keep still--I know I can't do it--so I wondered if you had some form of meditation to get into that head.
Cluzet: What's interesting for me is that I generally consider myself to be more of a physical actor, and I'm somebody that doesn't really want to use the dialogue but prefers to act through my body, and then sometimes when I have a script, I look and kind of throw away the dialogue and I just look at how I can expressive it through my body. Here it was totally different, and I was very concerned about it being tiring for people to just see me sitting there and not doing anything. I realized that once I allowed myself to accept that I wasn't going to be moving, that I wasn't going to be conveying the strength of my body, that an additional dimension was added. I disappeared into it, but that added the additional dimension.

CS: Does playing a role like this make you appreciate small things like being able to get up and not having to be confined to a wheelchair?
Cluzet: Of course. It's a funny thing. While we were shooting the film, whenever I was in the wheelchair, I would see people moving away from me, and I really had that experience of what a handicapped person in a wheelchair feels like, which is that people don't want to approach you. They feel that this is somebody who is suffering and they're inapproachable. Maybe there's something contagious about them, and so they stood away from me. At the end, when I was able to get up and get out of the chair, I was glad because at least now I was able to interact with them.

CS: That's very interesting because you're very well known in France and when you walk down the street, I'm sure people know who you are, so was it weird being in this situation where people weren't approaching you when you were out in public?
Cluzet: I think that my idea is that when I'm shooting a film, I like to be both invisible and present at the same time to capture those two qualities. I look more for the interior than the exterior and as an actor, when I'm shooting the film, I don't have that need to be filmed, and I'm more concerned about being a good partner in the filmmaking process. Ultimately, it's really the director who decides what is filmed and what isn't.

CS: That leads me to asking about Omar, because he's a force of nature and almost a scene-stealer, so how hard is it to perform with him where you have to sit there unmoving the whole time and watch him do his thing.
Cluzet: I think basically when people come to see a film now they're not really looking to see the roles that the actors are playing, they're coming to see the film and particularly a successful film. They're not there to see a particular actor, and I think what's important is the duo between the two characters and in a way this is like the classic clown sketch where you have the White Face and the August Clown--you have the very serious straight man and the comedian--and it's the interplay between the two that's interesting to those people, and I think in order to make the film succeed, we really had to make this duo work, and I realized that for me, I was there to be the straight man and for Omar to play off of me. I was there to encourage him, because he really needed that to get his humor across and to be effective.

CS: So his whole goal was to make you laugh?
Cluzet: Yes, we really decided right at the beginning that "I would be acting for you and you'll be acting for me," and I found really quickly was that I became an audience and I was there and I was enthusiastic and I was really helping him to get that extraordinary humor that he has across. That was my goal.

CS: I don't get the impression you do that many comedies, so I think that's why it works because pairing the serious dramatic actor with him doing the comedy made the mix of the two things work so well.
Cluzet: The directors here had worked with Omar before, they had worked with him on three other films, and this film was written specifically for him, and what they were looking for in casting the person who would play opposite him was someone who would be a good partner, someone who would be able to help him to come to the fore, to show him off, someone who would be acceptable and also somebody who would be willing to do some preparation work before the shooting actually started. I think in a sense you may be correct that maybe they were looking for someone who was a little bit more at ease in a serious dramatic role, but the real person on whose book this film is based, the author of the book, he insisted on giving the rights to his film tha he would only do so if the film were made as a comedy.

CS: Even though your role isn't physical, there are physical moments where he has to carry you around. How did you and Omar get comfortable to do those scenes?
Cluzet: It was somewhat delicate for him because he does have to carry me around when he takes me in and out of the wheelchair or in and out of the bed, and he really had to do so and train to develop his back muscles, because he's putting his arms around me when he's picking me up in that way so he did have to do some training in order to be able to do that. I couldn't help him because my character, I had to be almost as if I was a dead body, it's a dead weight, and he had to move me, and I wasn't able to help him by making it any easier.

CS: Did you at least do other scenes first to get comfortable with each other before he started carrying you around?
Cluzet: No, we just went in and did it.

CS: This film has obviously been a huge hit in France and seeing the movie I can understand why, since it's a movie you want to see over and over because it's so wonderful. You were already a pretty well known star in France so has it made it even harder to walk around?
Cluzet: Perhaps a little bit but I've always dreamed of being a celebrity, and I think that if that's something that you want, you have to accept that public recognition like that is going to happen.

CS: On the other hand, do you like coming to a place like New York where you might run into some French people on the site, but you can also walk around without being disturbed?
Cluzet: I was in New York about 20 years ago shooting the film "'Round Midnight" and I was with the crew at the Mayflower Hotel and the barman said to me, "There are a number of people outside who would really like to see you, so could you go outside because we can't really accommodate everyone in here?" So I went outside and I saw seven or eight people there and I was thinking to myself the stage manager for the film had put them up to it. I went and I signed everybody's autograph and I wrote "Thank you Albert for setting this up for me" and the next day all the people came back and said, "No, we just want you to sign your autograph."

CS: Where do you go from here after having this huge hit in France? Have you explored doing more Hollywood movies since it's been some time?
Cluzet: No, to be really modest, they're not clamoring for me to come and make films in the United States. I've shot a few films here, "'Round Midnight" being one of them which I shot in English, but for the most part, I think it's something that's really a cultural thing for me. I think there's a kind of love relationship between an actor and an audience and this is something I really feel with the audiences in France. Even though the audiences in general may be smaller in size than they used to be, I still feel comfortable with that kind of relationship as a cultural thing.

CS: "Tell No One" was one of the bigger French films here and I have a feeling this one will be even bigger.
Cluzet: I think that in France, we really admire American films, we admire their drive, we admire the modernity and ellipsism in the film and the writing and the style of acting and we look at them perhaps in a way to see what we can steal from them, too, to make our own films more modern. I think in my generation of actors, which would be the generation of Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, we used to watch them a lot to see what was it in their style of acting that was modern compared to the French actors that we were used to at that point. So now what we're trying to do is send you back some of our modernity so you can see what that is. I think that what's important is when people see a film they don't want to see an actor acting, they want to see an actor living.

---

We wouldn't have a chance to talk to Cluzet's on-screen partner Omar Sy for another couple of weeks, but we sat down with him at the noisy Mercer Street Hotel lounge to talk about the performance that won him the coveted French Oscar, the Cesar, defeating The Artist's Jean Dujardin, thought by many to be the favorite. Midway through the interview, Harvey Weinstein, who picked up the U.S. rights shortly before the Cesars, possibly knowing that American audiences would love it as much as others, stopped by to give Sy his regards and it's pretty clear he has high hopes The Intouchables will be his company's next French hit.

ComingSoon.net: I spoke to the directors who you'd worked with before, so how did they approach you about doing this?
Omar Sy: I already had made three films with these filmmakers before this and every time my role got bigger and they were always comedies and the last one we made before this, they had given me a scene within the comedy where I was supposed to have a different kind of reaction, I was supposed to get angry at that point and show a different range of emotions that they weren't familiar with, so when they saw me play that role--I'm known for being a comedian--and when they saw I could pull off a more dramatic part, they said, "We feel like giving you a role where you can really go all-out and show every facet of your talent and we want to do the script." Then they came back to me and told me about this project and they told me, "We want to work on this story. If you are on board, we're going to write this script. If not, we're not going to do it."

CS: And it was based on the real relationship between these two people…
Sy: When they pitched the project to me, they actually showed me a TV documentary on the two characters and that's how they shared the project with me.

CS: Did they have your input while they were writing the script?
Sy: Yes, we did get to talk back and forth now and then about my character. What I was able to contribute was more my direct experience of life in the poor suburbs in France and the way the social dynamics work in those neighborhoods--relationships between brothers and sister and family structure--so I could provide them with more specific and precise details on my personal experience growing up there in that environment, or I could just come up with little ideas of how to make the character more likeable. It wasn't an enormous amount of talking, but we did talk and they did come and see me three or four times at key points in their scriptwriting process and there was a little bit of back and forth that way.

CS: At what point did you find out that François was going to play the other role?
Sy: I actually learned that very early on. It was probably first or second draft of the script, so it was very soon into the project. That was even more significant because that made me want to be in the project even more and it was a true gift. This movie has brought me so many gifts and so many surprises and that's probably where the surprises started.

CS: Did you want to spend any time with François beforehand to rehearse and get comfortable or was it better for the movie to keep you apart before shooting your first scenes?
Sy: No, we don't really rehearse as such. The method that we follow with Eric and Olivier was that we'd do readings. We actually all sit around a table and we go through the material, and we see what comes up and we notice if there's any blockage, any difficult passage, and whenever that happens, there's questions and explanations back and forth so that when we get on set with the real shooting, we're free to really work on it. So if there are any questions, we ask them beforehand, so the four of us just sat around a table and just went over the material.

CS: Did you do any research about caregivers or was it again important not to know that much about it for your character?
Sy: Yes, I did spend a few days in a hospital in the section where they deal with handicapped people, and I did less than a week of training. I learned how to massage people with a physical handicap or how to lift them up and handle them, so I did that so I could look credible, and also so I wouldn't hurt myself or François.

CS: This ended up being a fairly physical role, having to lift François in and out of the wheelchair, so did you two have to practice? When was the first time you actually carried him around? Did you do those scenes later in the filming?
Sy: No, actually, we filmed them in the early part of the shooting, because as I said, I worked on preparation, I had gone to the hospital, and I'd gone to the gym to strengthen my back. I really wanted to be in solid physical condition so I could do the scene over and over without there being any problem. I wanted to do the scenes early on so that we could get them over and done with it, because I was concerned about them so I just wanted to get them out of the way initially. As I said, I wanted to be free to not worry about the physical part so I could use all my energy to really concentrate on what was going on between the two of us on set. It really worked out very well given all the training and François helped the effort by losing weight.

CS: Even though you had done readings and preparation, was there room to do any improvisation? Did they give you the freedom to come up with some ideas and try things while shooting?
Sy: A little bit, but not a lot. In earlier films, there was a lot more of that, but this time the script was so tight and it was so well-written--and it had been written just for me--that it really didn't need any additions.

CS: I can't remember if it was François who told me this or Eric and Olivier, but they said that you were deliberately trying to make François crack up and mess up takes, and that you were similar to the character in that way.
Sy: I'm kind of like that, that's the way my personality is. I really like to kid around and it's my own way of concentrating. In order for me to be able to feel better and concentrate, I need everybody else around me to be relaxed.

CS: The dance number was pretty amazing so was that mostly your moves or did you work with someone to choreograph it?
Sy: No, this idea was inspired because the filmmakers know me very well since we had already done films together, and during those films we partied a lot, so they'd seen me dance at these parties, so they knew that's what I do and I like it, so together, we just chose the right music and then I decided to just let go. I didn't have preset stuff or choreography. I just let myself go and did what I like to do, and they were very good in the way they filmed me. They really made me look good, but it's really what I like to do - I really like to move.

CS: This movie's been a huge hit in France and you're already a comedy start from your television show, so does that make it impossible for you to walk anywhere in France at this point without being recognized?
Sy: Yes, it is like that, but I don't hide at all. I'm actually very happy that this is happening to me. I'm very proud of what this has brought me, so I don't hide at all. I really take it in, I enjoy it.

CS: I don't know how long you've been in New York City, but has it been nice to walk around and not get recognized.
Sy: It's nice to be able to take a few steps without people recognizing me.

CS: I thought I heard there's already a talk of doing an English language version of this, and that's something that's becoming fairly common. Is there any American actor that you'd want to play your part?
Sy: I have a very good answer for that now… Meryl Streep.

CS: That would be a real challenge for her.
Sy: She's capable of doing anything.

CS: What have you been doing since making this movie? I assume you're still doing the shown in France?
Sy: Yes, until the end of June.

CS: Has there been a lot of pressure to try and learn English to do more American movies?
Sy: Yeah, already doing interviews now, it would be so much better if I could speak English so that I could speak to you directly but I'll definitely work on it.

CS: I understand you're working with Michel Gondry. I spoke to Audrey Tautou about a month ago when she was here for "Rendezvous with French Cinema," so have you already started preparing for that and when you might start shooting?
Sy: We've already done all the prepwork in terms of the costume and we actually already shot a small scene that was supposed to take place in winter so we got that out of the way. Audrey was not there for that particular scene but we're going to have a lot of scenes together. I've already talked to her two or three times, and I'm really looking forward to being on this movie. Having said that, I like to do a lot of preparation by myself. I like to get to the point where I show up on set and I'm really very well prepared.

CS: I know the general premise that she's sick and she has something growing inside of her, but who do you play and is it very different from what we've seen you do?
Sy: I'm a chef. I already cook but I just have to make small movements that make me look like a true chef, but I just wanted it to look authentic.

CS: Romain Duris is also in the film and he's done both comedy and drama, so do you have a lot of scenes with him?
Sy: Well, I know him as an acquaintance - we just say "Hello" when we meet in the street, but he was there for that little scene we already shot in the winter and it worked out really well. It was a really good start, so I think we're all very excited to be on this project.

CS: Your role in "The Intouchables" was based on your own personality and you were able to bring a lot of yourself to the role, but are you looking for roles that are very different, either more dramatic or different from what people might expect from you?
Sy: Of course, that's the goal. I really want to play all kinds of roles and they can be close to me or not close to me. I just want to try it all and now I have the great opportunity to be able to actually take these projects on so I'm definitely going to throw myself into it.

CS: Do you generally lean more towards doing comedy? Is it more fun to do that for you?
Sy: Well, I'm definitely more at ease with comedy--that's where I started out--and so it's my first love, so to speak, and I have more of a sensibility for it and more familiar with it. Having said that, I also want to be open to everything else.

source: http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=90334

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Movie posters of "The Intouchables":


credits: en.unifrance.org


credits: notrecinema.com

credits: notrecinema.com


credits: notrecinema.com


credits: notrecinema.com


credits: www.wainmaaro7.com



credits: antonsan.net

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Movie review: Les Intouchables / Nedotknutelní

Best French film in years has perfect grasp of the feel-good

Posted: June 13, 2012

By André Crous - Staff Writer


Surprise hit. The friendship formed between Driss and Philippe is one to take joy in.

Some of the best French films focus on the low-income outer-city suburbs of Paris, better known as the banlieue, where the country's foreign population is clustered, separated from the rest of the country by money, culture and language.

In 1995, Mathieu Kassovitz' La Haine (Hate) caused an uproar when it was released. Shot almost exclusively on location in some of the poorest and most violent quarters of Paris, it also featured appalling police brutality and neighborhood slang that made the characters appear very authentic, if not always easy to understand.

Entre les Murs (The Class), released in 2008, became the first film from France in more than 40 years to win the coveted Golden Palm award at the Cannes Film Festival. Set in a French high-school class where most of the students lived in the banlieue, the film's treatment of both the students and their French language teacher was stunning in its realism and constant engagement of issues on a large scale.

Now comes Les Intouchables (literally, "The Untouchables," but oddly released worldwide as "The Intouchables"), a film based on true events that tells the story of an unlikely friendship between a rich quadriplegic and a much younger Senegalese-born former criminal. The film has generated a frenzy of excitement in France, where ticket sales have earned it a place among the most successful local films of all time.

Les Intouchables/ Nedotknutelní
*****
Directed by Olivier Nakache, Eric Toledano
With Francois Cluzet, Omar Sy, Anne Le Ny, Audrey Fleurot

Francois Cluzet plays the rich quadriplegic Philippe, who is interviewing applicants for the position of personal care aide, when Driss (Omar Sy) arrives. A handsome black man from the suburbs who has recently been released from prison after robbing a jewelry store, he says he knows Philippe would never hire him, but he needs Philippe to acknowledge this as an interview so Driss can collect his unemployment insurance.

In the space of a few minutes, however, Driss' brazen flirting with Philippe's secretary Magalie (Audrey Fleurot) and throwaway lines about Hector Berlioz give wonderful color to the two men and, being a bit of a risk taker - he injured his spine in a paragliding accident - Philippe chooses Driss as his new personal aide.

The world of private jets and paintings worth 40,000 euros bought like they are hot dogs is one Driss has never laid eyes on before, and the experience would be humbling to anyone, but he confronts it as he confronts everything else: with a winning combination of curiosity, childlike excitement and an honorable sense of duty to the one he is trusted to comfort.

The rapport between the two main characters is fascinating, and the viewer never has a problem connecting with their budding friendship. Philippe, never a victim of his condition, knows how to push Driss' buttons just a little, and Driss' animated lust for life inspires his employer to hang on.

Many smaller storylines weave their way through the narrative, including those of Philippe's daughter Élisa and Driss' mother and brother, and the two men's involvement in these cases also reveal a lot about their characters and development.

A car chase that takes place late at night on the streets of the capital bookends the film, and underscores the slow and very natural growth we witness over the course of the two hours. While the opening scene appears as nothing more than a high-adrenaline burst of energy that somehow represents the mischievous nature of the two men, the scene's repetition emphasizes the beauty of the compassion at its core - compassion we could never have guessed during the film's opening minutes.

Some have commented on the change writer-director team Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano made to the original story, in that Driss is based on Algerian Abdel Sellou, and reviewers Stateside were particularly sensitive to the fact the story was changed so that it rather shows a young black man becoming friends with a wealthy white man.

What makes their argument moot, however, is the approach of Omar Sy to his character, who never pretends to be in need of any help and deals with Philippe as if they had known each other for years. Sy and the wheelchair-bound Cluzet deliver prodigious performances that never seem like the two are communicating anything other than a sincere friendship.

Les Intouchables is far from predictable; the development is engrossing and the resolution is very mature, tinged with only a hint of sadness. Despite a lack of inventive camerawork, perhaps the film's only flaw, and a refusal to engage the social problems of the banlieue, the intimate central story is told extremely well. Feel-good but complex, this is exactly what these kinds of films should look like.

Locally, Les Intouchables is released in French with Czech subtitles.

source: http://www.praguepost.com/night-and-day/cinema/13412-movie-review-les-intouchables-nedotknutelni.html

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Les Intouchables Posters:


credits: as tagged


credits: tuxboard.com

Illustrations:


credits: dunsky.ru

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Interviews with the actors and directors (No Eng subs):

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"Les Intouchables" Bluray Cover Designs:


credits: www.pixmule.com


credits: hirescovers.net

Soundtrack cover for Intouchables - Single:



credits for the two pictures above: www.soundtrack-covers.com

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Intouchables: a movie that touched my heart

Posted on 14 July 2012 by Patricia Gras

It is not a gangster movie. It is a French film. The second, most successful movie they have ever made. Why has this movie been so surprisingly liked around the world? Perhaps because it captures a relationship that can happen to any of us, if only we were lucky enough to experience it.

The movie is based on a true story based on a book “You Changed My Life” by Abdel Sellou. It is about a friendship between Philippe Pozzo di Borgo and Abdel Sellou, two very different men.

They come from different worlds but somehow because they are both authentic about who they are, where they came from and where they want to go, it is an ode to the power of bonding, respect and ultimately, unselfish love and friendship.

What happens when we allow ourselves to get out of our comfort zone with a person we don’t know much about and generally distrust precisely because we don’t know them? In this story, Philippe, a wealthy tetraplegic eventually befriends Driss, the unemployed ex con from the ghettos originally from Algeria he hires to care for him. They are both “in or untouchables.” Driss has been to prison and almost everyone is afraid of dealing with Philippe because of his disability.

At first, the friendship seems unlikely, the irreverent Driss just wants Phillip’s signature to get his unemployment check, but Phillip sees a window of opportunity with Driss, because he doesn’t want any pity and this young man has none for him.

What happens in the movie is a series of situations where we learn how each man offers the other a snippet of of a different kind of life. They then “walk” with each other through different journeys they would have never experienced otherwise.
For instance, Phillip the man who can’t walk or move without Driss’ help, invites him to paraglide, something he ends up doing reluctantly.
Phillip, whose aristocratic family has never experienced the joy of dancing without inhibition, finally enjoys a birthday party thanks to Driss’ contagious dance moves.

On surface, they have nothing in common, yet their authenticity and humanity allows them to build a lifetime friendship that would change their lives forever. Today, both men remain friends in real life.

What I didn’t tell you because I find that it unimportant is their race. One is White the other is Arab. (In the movie, a French African actor of Senegalese plays Driss decent.) Yet many still find this relationship offensive. For instance, one review in the United States says the movie “flings about the kind of Uncle Tom racism one hopes has permanently exited American screens.” I don’t believe this movie is about race at all. It is about humanity, possibility and hope.

We can’t solve the problems of the world with a movie, a novel or a discussion with clarity, but for two hours, we can believe people can bring out the best in each other and in doing so create a more magical, kind and compassionate world.

by Patricia Gras and Benjamin Ibarra

source: http://patriciagras.net/2012/07/14/intouchables-a-movie-that-touched-my-heart/