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A Best of the Year: French Film With Unusual Friendship

Wednesday Matinee

Destination: France

Movie: The Intouchables

By Jane Boursaw

The IntouchablesI can’t say I was all that thrilled about seeing The Intouchables when I first heard about it. A movie about a wealthy quadriplegic who hires a poor Algerian immigrant to be his caretaker? No thanks, it sounds like just the sort of sentimental tear-fest I tend to avoid.

But then I saw The Intouchables at the Traverse City Film Festival this summer, and it instantly became one of my favorite films of the year. It’s also a beautiful travelogue through Paris and the French countryside.

Inspired by Philippe Pozzo di Borgo’s memoir A Second Wind, the film follows the author’s life as a black cloud of doom descends upon him in the early 1990s. First his wife is diagnosed with a terminal illness. Then a paragliding accident leaves Philippe a quadriplegic. Even though he’s the descendant of two prominent French families and the director of one of the world’s most celebrated champagne houses, his life is suddenly in ruins. Continue reading A Best of the Year: French Film With Unusual Friendship