Samba

Director: Olivier Nakache, Eric Toledano
Starring: Omar Sy, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Tahar Rahim, Izia Higilin
Distributor: Transmission Films
Runtime: 118 mins. Reviewed in Apr 2015

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Rating notes: Mature themes and coarse language

It is reported that Les Intouchables/The Intouchables has sold over 50 million tickets around the world. Audiences responded to the story of the prisoner, who had to take care of a wheelchair-bound cranky wealthy man. The film was both sad and funny, but had pleasing emotional appeal. The directors have said there is no plan for a sequel but were content that there was going to be an American remake (seemingly the validation of the success of a French film!).

After the success of Les Intouchables, the directors waited some years for their next film. But here it is, Samba. And they have invited their star, Omar Sy to come back and team with Charlotte Gainsbourg.

The setting is Paris and the story is that of an illegal migrant, Samba, who came 10 years earlier from Senegal and has been able to survive, living with his uncle, working in a restaurant kitchen, taking on labouring jobs, hoping to become a chef. He has been very careful and has avoided arrest but is attacked in the street, fights back and is arrested. He is detained in the internment centre – difficult and confined, but far less enclosed and repressed than contemporary Australian and off-shore detention centres.

Charlotte Gainsbourg, one of France’s leading actresses, plays Alice, who has suffered a breakdown from her high-powered job and is assisting at a clearing centre for the detainees. She accompanies an earnest young woman and interviews Samba. Alice has been warned to keep a distance, not become involved, but Samba is pleasant in the discussions so that she actually gives him her number. It comes in handy, as we might expect, when he needs some further help.

Omar Sy is quite different from his character in Les Intouchables. He is a physically big man and can take care of himself when attacked, but has a rather gentle spirit, has been working the years in France and sending home money to his mother and upset when he is detained and can’t get work to earn the money. His uncle, a rather stoic old man, works in the kitchen, gives advice to his nephew but thinks it is time for him to return home.

Over the weeks, Samba and Alice cross paths, Alice confiding in Samba the difficulties she has experienced, gaining some confidence again, prepared to go to interviews for getting the job back. Samba has been working on building sites and odd jobs and becomes friendly with Wilson, a cheerful Brazilian worker who thinks that women are attracted to the exuberant Latin American temperament. He doesn’t really look Brazilian and has to confess that his real name is one Walid and that he is from Algeria. But he is so cheerful, that nothing stops him and he sets his eyes on Alice’s companion from the office.

The film slows down a little in the middle, especially when the main characters turn up at a dance for the staff of the detention interviews, some comedy with several of the interviewers, elderly women who have struggled with foreign languages, accents, yet still try to do their best for the detainees.

There is some drama towards the end when Samba encounters a friend that he made in the detention centre, promising to track down his fiancee, which he does but has a one night stand with her and he cannot face his friend. The police pursue, they hang onto a rail over the river but both fall in – but there is still hope, the audience realising what has happened in terms of coats, but Alice and Samba’s uncle do not. Ultimately, Samba makes a decision to do the right thing.

There is a great deal of warmth in the film, a most sympathetic portrait of an illegal worker in France and the continued edge in avoiding police and discovery. With the enormous flow of migrants and refugees, legal and illegal, throughout the world, it is quite important that audiences put faces on these migrants and discover and identify with their stories.