Intouchable

Hubby and I don’t get out much. We’re too busy woodshedding on our ukuleles and doing “music stuff.” So it’s a real treat to go to the movies and we have a hot date this morning at the mall cinema up the road. The one that shows foreign flicks.

We’re here to see a French movie, “The Intouchables.” The word on the street is “see it or else.” We find our assigned seats. They are cushy comfy and actually rock. A phalanx of women plop down in front of us. I overhear one say she saw the movie two nights ago and loved it so much she had to see it again and bring her mother.

A maroon-festooned usher stands in front of the screen and personally welcomes us to the theater, reminds us to please turn off all the _you-know-what’s_ and of course, enjoy the movie. Maybe he really wants to be an actor, but frankly the young man is so sweet and sincere that we give him a round of applause when he finishes his announcements. I think it’s a very NPR kind of crowd.

I am assuming this movie has something to do with feeling marginalized and untouchable. But in reality, it is so much more. The Intouchables is based on the memoirs of the two main characters. In other words, the story is true. Or about as true as one gets in our world where truth is a moving target…

It’s about two outsiders, untouchables. One is a rich aristocrat who is a quadriplegic and a prisoner within his own body and his own mansion. He hires a caregiver, an ex-con from the ghetto, a rabble-rouser who is uncouth, brutally honest and above all, hilarious. I know it’s cliché, but I laugh and laugh until I cry. Then I snivel some more.

Spoiler Alert: Nobody dies in this movie, but be warned, there is profanity. But it’s in French. That language is so beautiful even curse words sound like a marriage proposal. And reading the “f” bombs in subtitles, well “c’est si bon.”

Why does a story about two men whose unlikely friendship transforms them both resonate so deeply with audiences around the world? Well maybe there is a trace of “untouchable” in all our hearts. Maybe it’s a universal thing, you know. So might as well laugh. That’s a good place to start.

Just like they do in the movie and if we’re lucky, like the aristocrat and the bad-boy, we find ourselves. Little by little. Because someone finds us.