To mark the fifth anniversary of NRC’s film supplement in 2016, we held a pollamong readers: what did they think was the best film of the last five years?It became French Intouchables from 2011, about paralyzed wheelchairbillionaire Philippe (François Cluzet) from the neck down, who regains hisjoie de vivre through a rough friendship with his Senegalese caretaker Driss(Omar Sy), his ‘guardian devil’. A heartwarming buddy movie. But the best?
Critics, for whom watching a film is a job, sometimes forget why people go tothe cinema. Not necessarily for a highly educational, original or aestheticexperience, but to amaze, to excite, to feel good. Film is an emotion machine.And already found Intouchables no matter the genre, it is a perfectexecution of a feel-good formula about the disabled person and his companion.In such a film, the handicapped temporarily transcends his limitations, thetwisted companion his hang-ups. His work becomes his friend, through care hebecomes a better person. It helps if they travel together: in adventures andfleeting contacts along the way, the ‘odd couple’ forms.
An example in the genre of ‘road movie with limitations’ is the Flemishblockbuster Hasta la Vista! – in the Netherlands thinly copied as GoodbyeAmigos : Three handicapped youths drive under the guise of a wine tour to aspecial Spanish brothel to lose their virginity. Or The Peanut Butter Falcon(2018), in which Zack, a young man with Down syndrome, sails up the river tobecome a wrestler with semi-criminal shrimp fisherman Shia LaBeouf. Or TheFundamentals of Caring (2016), about a blocked writer who finds herselfthrough a road trip of trivial American attractions with the sardonic,sexually frustrated Trevor, who suffers from a muscular disease. But theclassic in the genre is RainMan in which the selfish brat Tom Cruise kidnapshis severely autistic brother Dustin Hoffman from an institution and becomes abetter person thanks to him.
Hearse to Marseilles
Two are currently in theaters. Presque , in circulation this week, garneredaudience awards at film festivals; more about that later. Rose , anothercrowd favourite, has been running for some time. In it, the schizophrenic Rosegoes on a bus holiday to Paris with her Danish sister and brother-in-law,where she experienced a great love as a girl. Along the way, she sometimessurprises her traveling companions with her French savoir vivre. A somewhatinvented script with cardboard characters.
Presque , in theaters this week, lightly plays with the conventions of thegenre without taking itself very seriously. In Lausanne, Switzerland, the pathof undertaker Louis (Bernard Campan) literally crosses that of the spasticIgor (Alexandre Jollien), bicycle courier in organic vegetables – Louis driveshim off the road with his hearse. Bullied by an overprotective mother, Igorimmediately sees a friend in him and hides in the hearse when Louis – as itturns out for very personal reasons – wants to deliver a body to Marseilles.
As it should be, the friendship starts with discomfort: Louis wants to dumpIgor at a roadhouse, but nevertheless gives him a lift to Montpellier, afterwhich Igor immediately invites a hitchhiker. The extroverted Igor turns out tobe a connoisseur of classical philosophy who captivates everyone withappropriate quotes from Plato, Epictetus and Boethius. He is determined tocompensate for his speech problem and motor disability with knowledge, wit anda sunny attitude to life. He breaks open the reluctant oyster Louis with thegreatest of ease, although he goes a bit far when he makes his hearse withcorpse and all available to drunken joyriders.
Igor also needs some redemption himself; fortunately, in the corridor of ahotel, he encounters a mythological creature, ‘the whore with the goldenheart’. But otherwise he is mainly the savior and confessor of the closed,living on autopilot Louis. Although the undertaker has to help Igor with allkinds of small things – cut steak, close the fly – the duo is completelyevenly matched: two lonely men who are happy to recognize a friend.
cerebral palsy
Well, I wonder if I Presque just as much if he hadn’t been so ‘authentic’.Igor is played by Alexandre Jollien. Born with cerebral palsy – nearlysuffocated by the umbilical cord during birth – Jollien has become a renownedphilosopher and literary star since his autobiographical debut Praise forweakness from 2000, in which the inherently degrading treatment of peoplewith disabilities played a leading role. What if Igor had been played by anactor without his disability? Then I had Presque presumably experienced askitschy – if it were made at all.
I notice that the ongoing debate about representation and authenticity inacting has not left me untouched either. In principle, actors have every rightto play a disability that they do not have. After all, their job is to crawlinto someone else’s skin. Yet it is Presque such a nice film becauseAlexandre Jollien is funny, but above all authentic.
With that other road movie with a limitation that is currently running, Rose_I was annoyed by the ‘schizophrenic’ acting of Sofie Gråbøl, known asInspector Sarah Lund in the Danish crime series _The Killing. She ‘does’schizophrenia quite virtuoso, as Dustin Hoffman very cleverly ‘did’ autism in1988 in RainMan. But now I find that to be a nuisance. In 2023, a road moviewith a disability benefits from an actor with a disability. If available.