Turns out Alice had been working as a high-powered executive before experiencing burnout and thoroughly zonking a co-worker during a meeting. Sy is a well-known comedian in his native France, and his co-starring role was undoubtedly instrumental in bringing out Gainsbourg’s latent comic talents as the volatile Alice. That is, until she meets Samba-they have an immediate connection that’s like pow!-and suddenly Alice becomes both empathetic and efficient. Alice is new to the volunteering game-and talk about quirky! She’s clearly unstable and clueless, and usually does the exactly opposite of what she’s told. It’s there that we meet Alice ( Gainsbourg), one of the female volunteers whose social status and background is worlds apart from the immigrants they try to help. Somehow he manages to escape detention and go back to his uncle’s small flat on the outskirts of Paris, where he has only one option left: to seek help from an immigration advocacy center. It’s here that we meet Samba ( Sy), a Senegalese immigrant and aspiring chef who’s still washing dishes because, even after living in France for ten years, he has not yet acquired legal documentation.īut Samba even loses the dishwashing job after immigration authorities issue an order to immediately deport him back to Senegal. The camera then zooms in on the cake as waiters push it on a trolley through various corridors and pantries until coming to the kitchen, where the atmosphere is quieter, the surroundings much starker, and the people in the room much darker.
The setting is a posh hotel where an extravagant wedding reception is taking place a chorus of costumed dancers sing and prance around as they lift up the bride and groom-scions of the rich one percent, obviously-to let them take the ceremonial first cut of a huge wedding cake. The film’s upbeat opener encapsulates the major societal conflict that, while not exclusive to France, is perhaps best exemplified there. However, its obvious flaws are nicely overcome by the strong and slightly quirky performances by everyone in the wonderfully diverse cast-particularly the two leads, Sy and Charlotte Gainsbourg.
The latter role won a César Best Actor award for Omar Sy, the actor/comedian who quite wonderfully plays the central character in Samba, also directed by Nakache and Toledano.Īlthough the two films explore the same theme-the commonality between differing cultures- Samba is structurally far looser and, unfortunately, longer and less coherent than The Intouchables. The French directing team of Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano won worldwide acclaim and cinematic honors for The Intouchables, their charming comedy/drama about the deep bond that develops between a seriously disabled aristocratic Frenchman and his African-born caretaker.
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