ET Recommendation: Watch The Intouchables movie

A sleek Maserati is being driven rather recklessly at night by a black man with a distant-looking physically challenged white chap in the passenger’s seat. One could make all the wrong conclusions, more so when the driver starts racing with the police cars. Intercepted, finally, and about to be cuffed — as police forces operating on racial ‘principles’ work — he declares the passenger is a quadriplegic and needs immediate hospitalization. The police car ends up escorting them to the hospital. At which point the black chap Driss (Sy) lights up, announces he’s won the wager and drives off with his equally thrilled passenger, Philippe (Cluzet), to the background sound of a rather catchy French song.

That’s just about the tone and tenor of The Intouchables. A rollicking, fast-paced, comic-laced drama about a French aristocrat left dependent on others after an accident and the black man from the estates who comes in as his — at first bemused and reluctant — helper and then ends up changing his life. It’s quite a bit about finding, well, your feet again even after a crippling incident, and love and companionship, through the filter of two rather disparate individuals who just become friends.

The film actually became the second-biggest box office phenomenon in France in 2011, making it one of those periodic French films that go sort of viral. And, yes, it’s based on a true story.