Directed by Erik Toledano & Olivier Nakache
They meet in a detention center, the illegal and the volunteer caseworker. She has been warned to keep her distance — “Never give your number or you will get calls at night” — but when Samba asks, she demurs for all of a few seconds before spitting out the digits.
I can’t blame her. I mean, c’mon, we’re talking Omar Sy here. He’s that kind of guy who seems unaware how fine a specimen of masculinity he is, and it doesn’t hurt that he exudes decency. I know I’m reading too much into his screen persona, but that’s all I know of him apart from his star-making turn as the unorthodox caregiver in 2010’s Intouchables, also by Erik Toledano and Olivier Nakache.
Speaking of which, this film follows the same template, this time with Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg) as the figurative cripple and Samba her unlikely savior/love interest. Too bad the film falls flat in the romance department. The leads don’t generate enough spark to juice up an alarm clock. “You’re kind of different,” he tells her. “Different is good.” Dear Samba, you would be too if you’ve had a nervous breakdown.
I should backtrack. He’s from Senegal, working illegally as a dishwasher in Paris, and had just been ordered to leave the country. She’s helping him to get a work visa, or at least that’s the pretext for seeing him. They fall, if not exactly in love, then into some manner of intimacy born out of a profound need to reach out to someone else. And yet these two rootless souls never really seem to connect in the right places. Charlotte is too skittish, Samba too much of a gentleman. There’s a compelling story there, to be sure, just not the one we’re witness to.
It’s when the film pauses from that fruitless endeavor and focuses on the immigrant experience that it gains traction, due in no small part to Tahar Rahim as Wilson, who is as gregarious as his friend is grave, the spur to Samba’s lagging horse and catalyst for the film’s genuinely dramatic and outrageous moments. On his part, Omar Sy lends Samba all the gravitas he can muster, but after the first hour it becomes obvious his character is not going anywhere, giving the ending a hastily cobbled but nevertheless too neatly Chekhovian feel — in so many words, a cop-out. If it’s gritty realism you want, go see something by the Dardennes.
Am I saying you should pass on this movie? Hardly. It’s the funniest I have seen so far this year. In fact, I would rather it spent more time with Wilson and the gaggle of aging ladies that comprise the rest of Alice’s group of do-gooders. Toledano and Nakache are adept at populating their movies with such minor oddballs, and it keeps their latest effort from sinking into a pit of unearned sentimentality. That, and the music, this time from Jorge Ben, Gilberto Gil, Bob Marley, and the Brothers Johnson. Did I mention Tahar Rahim can dance? Muito bem, I believe is the way to describe it, and easily worth the price of admission.
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