Olivier Nakache's comedies with Éric Toledano find humour in people meeting across social divides. We enjoy the warmth and the actors' comic rapport, but the writing can be too keen to reassure us.
Fi1m perspective
Omar Sy and François Cluzet make the unequal friendship in The Intouchables (2011) feel convincing. Cluzet's Philippe is a wealthy aristocrat with quadriplegia, Sy's Driss his carer, an ex-con from the banlieues. We enjoyed their company because the comic rapport gives us something to watch beyond the obvious contrast between their circumstances. Olivier Nakache and his co-writer and co-director Éric Toledano are persuasive here when they let those actors do the work. The film is worth an evening, despite the screenplay's tidy treatment of class and race.
Nakache and Toledano moved from shorts to features in the mid-2000s, with comedies drawn from personal experience. The Intouchables was their breakthrough, and Samba (2014) continued the collaboration with Sy through a story concerned with immigration and precarious work. The Specials (2019) turned to support for autistic young people and people working together across communities. These are different subjects, but the repeated interest is in how people separated by social circumstances find common ground. Directing episodes of En thérapie (2021–2022) took Nakache into television.
The difficulty comes when the writing treats goodwill as an answer to the differences it has set up. In The Intouchables, Driss is too often required to supply vitality and irreverence for Philippe's benefit. Sy makes him particular enough for that restriction to matter; we can see the character being narrowed to serve the reassuring story. Philippe is also made useful as a chance for Driss to prove himself. Neither man is given enough room to be awkward or inconvenient once the screenplay has decided what their friendship means.
That does not cancel the pleasure of watching Sy and Cluzet together. Nakache and Toledano give their comic rapport enough attention to make this cautious story worth following. We would like them to leave more room for the awkwardness their screenplay keeps tidying away. Start with The Intouchables for the actors, without expecting their friendship to explain much about class or race.
Biography
Olivier Nakache is a French screenwriter, director and producer. He was born on 15 April 1973 in Suresnes, Hauts-de-Seine.
Nakache has worked in partnership with Éric Toledano since the mid-1990s, writing and directing a series of features together. Their breakthrough came with The Intouchables (2011), which they wrote and directed. Subsequent collaborations include Those Happy Days (2006), Samba (2014), C'est la vie! (2017), The Specials (2019) and A Difficult Year (2023). Nakache is also known for creating the television series In Therapy (2021–2022).
