People Next Door 2016 / Intouchables / France 2011
A wealthy quadriplegic needs a new personal assistant, and so he organizes a series of job interviews at his luxurious mansion. But what happens when, indifferent to his own well-being, he rejects several qualified caretakers and surprisingly hands the lucrative position over to a jovial guy from the suburbs who only came to ask for a stamp to satisfy the unemployment office? One of the most successful French box office hits of recent years, this lively comedy has the answer.
Wealthy quadriplegic Philippe (François Cluzet) needs a new personal assistant and organises a series of job interviews at his luxurious mansion. But what happens when, indifferent to his own well-being, he rejects several qualified caretakers and surprisingly hands the lucrative position over to the jovial Driss (Omar Sy), a guy from the suburbs who only came to ask for a stamp to satisfy the unemployment office? Initially everything suggests their encounter has the makings of a highly explosive combination: They’re right at opposite ends of the social spectrum – a respectable lover of classical music with a penchant for posh cars and designer suits, and a young lad with lewd jokes up his sleeve, just released from a six-month stint in prison, where decorum probably wasn’t on the menu. This unbridled comedy, one of the most successful French box-office hits in recent years, nevertheless demonstrates that bringing a melancholy multimillionaire together with an extrovert habitual offender makes much more sense than it might at first have seemed.
Martin Horyna
112 min / Color, DCP
Director Olivier Nakache, Éric Toledano
/ Screenplay Olivier Nakache, Éric Toledano
/ Dir. of Photography Mathieu Vadepied
/ Music Ludovico Einaudi
/ Editor Dorian Rigal-Ansous
/ Art Director François Emmanuelli
/ Producer Nicolas Duval, Laurent Zeitoun, Yann Zenou
/ Production Quad Productions
/ Coproduction Ten Films, Chaocorp, Gaumont, TF1 Films Production
/ Cast François Cluzet, Omar Sy
/ Sales Gaumont
Olivier Nakache (b. 1973, Suresnes, France) and Éric Toledano (b. 1971, Paris), a French writer-director duo who are quite at home in comedy, have been working together since the mid-1990s. They started out creating short films: Le jour et la nuit (1995), Les petits souliers (1999), La part de l’ombre (1999, dir. Olivier Nakache) and Ces jours heureux (2002). They managed to cast Gérard Depardieu and Annie Girardot for their feature film debut Let’s Be Friends (2005). After Those Happy Days (2006) and Tellement proches (2009) they turned in what has proved to be their most successful comedy by far, The Intouchables (2011), which, after its premiere at the San Sebastián IFF, became a festival and distribution smash in various countries and to date enjoys French cinema’s third-highest viewing figures of all time. The pair’s most recent collaboration is the romantic comedy Samba (2014).
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Branislav Volák
Distributor, PR & Marketing, Producer, TV Representative
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