Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!: The Specials/Hors Normes (2019) - Universal humanism and an everyday hero lauded in great drama

2/25/2020

The Specials/Hors Normes (2019) - Universal humanism and an everyday hero lauded in great drama

♥♥♥♥♥

+ Best Drama of the Year + Best French Movie of the Year + Best Social Realism of the Year

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

Watch a trailer for the film with English subtitles here

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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Donald Sutherland has passed away

Born in Canada, Sutherland battled polio as a child. His first credit was in Suspense (1963, TV-series) and his first film was The Castle of the Living Dead (1964). Later credits in his remarkable career include The Saint (1965-66), The Dirty Dozen (1967), M*A*S*H (1970), Kelly's Heroes (1970), Klute (1971), Don't Look Now (1973), 1900 (1976), Casanova (1976), The Eagle Has Landed (1976), Ordinary People (1980), A Dry White Season (1989), JFK (1991), Outbreak (1995), Fallen (1998), Virus (1999), Fierce People (2005), Pride & Prejudice (2005), Lord of War (2005), The Hunger Games (2012), The Undoing (2020, miniseries) and many more. He passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Roger Corman has passed away

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Corman had a sprawling, intellectually hungry life as a youth and young man before arriving with his first film in 1955, Five Guns West. He would follow that with titles such as Apache Woman, It Conquered the World, Attack of the Crab Monsters, Teenage Cave Man, A Bucket of Blood, House of Usher, The Little Shop of Horrors, The Pit and the Pendulum, The Intruder, The Raven, The Terror, The Masque of Red Death, The Tomb of Ligeia, The Wild Angels, The Trip, Bloody Mama and many more. As a producer he was behind almost 500 films. Arguably among the most important filmmakers of the 20th century, Corman passed away at age 98. R.I.P.

William Friedkin has died

Born in Chicago, Friedkin accrued TV credits prior to his advance to the big screen as the director of Good TImes (1967), The Birthday Party (1968), The Night They Raided Minsky's (1968) and The Boys in the Band (1970) before his major breakthrough, The French Connection (1971), for which he won his only Oscar. He followed it up with the even bigger smash, The Exorcist (1973), arguably the best horror film of all time, for which he was Oscar-nominated. Later credits include Sorcerer (1977), Cruising (1980), To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), Rampage (1987), Rules of Engagement (2000), Killer Joe (2011) and The Devil and Father Amorth (2017, documentary). Friedkin passed away at age 87. R.I.P.

Louise Fletcher has passed away

Born in Alabama to deaf parents, Fletcher got her first credits in late-1950s TV-series.She took a 10 year-long sabbatical to devote her time to motherhood after the release of A Gathering of Eagles, but then came back and soon saw her career's most important part, as Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), for which she won her sole Oscar. Later credits include Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977), The Lucky Star (1980), Brainstorm (1983), Two Moon Junction (1988), Cruel Intentions (1999), A Perfect Man (2013) and many more. Fletcher passed away at age 88. R.I.P.

Jean-Luc Godard has passed away

Born in Paris, France, Godard lived much of his life in Switzerland. He wrote for French film criticism magazine Cahiers du Cinema and became foundational for the New French Wave that inspired new waves in scores of other countries across the world with his Breathless (1960). Later credits include A Woman Is A Woman (1961), Vivre Sa Vie (1962), Le Petit Soldat (1962), Contempt (1963), Alphaville (1965), Pierrot le Fou (1965), 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her (1967), Weekend (1967), Every Man for Himself (1980), King Lear (1987), Century of Cinema (1995, documentary), Goodbye to Language (2014) and many more. Godard died of assisted suicide at age 91. R.I.P.

Wolfgang Petersen has died

James Caan has died

Caan was born the son of Jewish immigrants from Germany in New York. He got his start on TV in the early 1960s. His credits include El Dorado (1966), The Rain People (1969), Brian's Song (1971, TV movie), The Godfather (1972), - for which he earned his only Oscar nomination, - Slither (1973), The Gambler (1974), Funny Lady (1975), Rollerball (1975), Silent Movie (1976), Hide in Plain Sight (1980), - the only film he also directed, - Thief (1981), Misery (1990), Honeymoon in Vegas (1992), Bottle Rocket (1996), Eraser (1996), Dogville (2003), Elf (2003), Las Vegas (2003-07), Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and many more. Caan passed away at age 82. R.I.P.

Jean-Louis Trintignant has died

Born in Vaucluse, France, Trintignant's theatrical debut as an actor was in If All the Guys in the World... (1955). Later credits include ...And God Created Woman (1956), The Seven Deadly Sins (1961), Inferno (1964), A Man and A Woman (1966), My Love, My Love (1967), A Man to Kill (1967), The Great Silence (1968), Z (1969), The Assassination (1972), Three Colors: Red (1994), Amour (2012), Happy End (2017) and many more. He also wrote and directed two films in the 1970s. Trintignant passed away at age 91. R.I.P.

Ray Liotta has died

Adopted from an orphenage at a young age, Liotta got hooked on acting in high school. He had various TV credits in the late 1970s and early 80s, with his film debut in The Lonely Lady (1983). Later credits include Something Wild (1986), Field of Dreams (1989), Goodfellas (1990), Cop Land (1997), Hannibal (2001), Blow (2001), Narc (2002), John Q (2002), Identity (2003), Observe and Report (2009), Youth in Revolt (2009), The Details (2011), Killing THem Softly (2012), The Place Beyond the Pines (2012), Shades of Blue (2016-18), The Simpsons (2018, TV-series), Marriage Story (2019), The Many Saints of Newark (2021), Black Bird (2022, TV-series) and many more. Liotta passed away at age 67 in his sleep while on production in the Dominican Republic. R.I.P.

Philip Baker Hall has died

Born in Ohio, Hall didn't start acting until he was 30. His long list of credits include Zabriskie Point (1970), Miami Vice (1987, TV-series), Midnight Run (1988), Ghostbusters II (1989), Cheers (1993, TV-series), Hard Eight (1996), The Rock (1996), Air Force One (1997), Boogie Nights (1997), Seinfeld (1991-98), Rush Hour (1998), The Insider (1999), Magnolia (1999), The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Bruce Almighty (2003), Dogville (2003), The Zodiac (2005), Zodiac (2007), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2004-09), Mr. Popper's Penguins (2011), Modern Family (2011-12) and many more. Hall passed away at age 90. R.I.P.

Film Excess - Free Ukraine - Stop Putin - End the war NOW!!

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2/25/2020

The Specials/Hors Normes (2019) - Universal humanism and an everyday hero lauded in great drama

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