The Intouchables Review

The film's engine is a performance constraint: Francois Cluzet plays a quadriplegic aristocrat using only his face and voice, so every beat of Philippe's interior life has to arrive through micro-shifts in the eyes and a very precise comic timing in the delivery. Omar Sy's Driss is the release valve, and the writing's best decision is that he never once softens his tone out of pity, which is exactly why Philippe hires him. Nakache and Toledano open with a Maserati doing 200 through Paris scored to Earth, Wind and Fire, then flash back, and that structure quietly promises the film will not be a sickroom drama.

The birthday concert scene is the thesis, a chamber recital answered with soul, each man performing his own idea of pleasure without conceding the other is wrong. The ear-scalding sequence gets laughs out of a body that cannot feel. Ludovico Einaudi's piano is the one lazy element, cueing feeling the scenes already have. The class politics are comfort food and the true story was considerably harder. As a two-hander it is close to unimpeachable.