♥♥♥♥♥
+ Best Drama of the Year + Best French Movie of the Year + Best Social Realism of the Year
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| The film's two male stars look severely pleased with something unknown on this uninformative poster for Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano's The Specials |
Bruno is a middle-aged Jewish man who runs an uncertified home for children and youths with severe autism in Paris with the help of a friend, who trains young people from the ghettos to be employees there. But between Bruno's unwillingness to say no and the authorities concerned probing, the home is in real jeopardy.
The Specials is written and directed by French master filmmakers Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano (The Intouchables/Intouchables (2011)), based on the true story of Stephane Benhamou, who is a friend of the filmmakers and runs a home like the one in the film in Paris.
Vincent Cassel (Black Tide/Fleuve Noir (2018)), so often playing thugs and violent men, - and usually being great at it, - here prospers with a very different character in Bruno, and it may in fact be his best performance to date: The over-burdened, sweet and deeply humanistic home leader is a true everyday life hero, and his home is an exceptional case for study. Not only does the home house the toughest autism cases and succeed in minimizing their medication, it is also run by a Jew, cooperating with Muslims, other Jews and really just every one else who turns up. A pragmatic realism and universally recognizable care for the individual makes this feat possible. Hélène Vincent (Les Petits Ruisseaux (2010)) as a mother to a young man with autism, whose life has changed wholly to support him, is also a stand-out in the charming and vibrant cast.
The story mixes the looming scrutiny from the authorities with the intake of a new, severely challenged boy, Valentine, and hiring of a new African-French helper from the projects, who gets attached to Valentine. It never nears feeling dry or overly stern, as Nakache/Toledano again successfully incorporate humor and romance, (mostly just sweet promises of future romance really), into the heavy mix. Keeping the balance so that the focus on the serious issue, - the financial realities behind pushing around these difficult autism cases between authorities and lack of a will to better their lives, - is a challenge that the filmmakers meet with impressive deftness, to some degree following a playbook that they have written with past projects.
This doesn't take anything away from the wonderful, very touching, ultimately uplifting drama The Specials, which will be especially meaningful for anyone near a person with autism.
Related posts:
Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano: 2019 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
Top 10: The best true story movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
The Intouchables/Intouchables/Untouchable (2011) - A universal, uplifting masterpiece
Cost: 13 mil. €, approximately 14.06 mil. $
Box office: 18.7 mil. $ and counting
= Big flop (has presently returned 1.33 times its cost)
[The Specials premiered 25 May (Cannes Film Festival, France, out of competition) and runs 114 minutes. The film is a co-production between no less than 15 companies. There are presently regrettably no North-American release of the film announced. Its 3 biggest markets have been production country France with 16.2 mil. $ (86.6 % of the total gross), (it sold more than 2.1 mil. tickets there), the Netherlands with 1.3 mil. $ (7 %) and Germany with 450k $ (2.4 %). The film is nominated for 8 César awards. The film has upcoming late February releases coming in Portugal, Spain and Finland and March releases scheduled in Australia and Turkey. Nakache and Toledano are returning with En Thérapie (TV-series), about the aftermath of the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks. Cassel returned in Underwater (2020); Reda Kateb (Zero Dark Thirty (2012)) in Possessions (2020, TV-series). 1,933 IMDb users have given The Specials a 7.6/10 average rating.]
What do you think of The Specials?
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