The Extraordinary ★★★★
ONE of the hit films of Perth’s 2020 French Film Festival has been The Extraordinary.
It’s a touching and thought-provoking crowd-pleaser, equal parts drama and comedy and anchored by two great performances from veteran Vincent Cassel and the always watchable Reda Kateb.
The film is based on the real-life work of two men, Stephane Benhamou and Daoud Tatou, who run a private facility caring for autistic young people. The names are changed for the film, I assume for some legal reasons, with Cassel playing the facility’s boss Bruno and Kateb his right-hand man Malik.
Their facility, Le Silence du Justes, has 40 clients and is already bursting at the seams when they are asked by a public hospital to help another young man, Valentin. At the same time the Health Department is investigating the facility’s suitability.
Some of their clients have conditions so severe that government facilities are no longer able to devote the time and effort or wear the risk to care for them.
The young people Bruno and Malik take in, such as Valentin, are prone at times to either self-harm or sudden bursts of physical activity that could inadvertently result in harm to relatives or carers.
In some cases, incidents can occur in public and require physical intervention and quick negotiating with the authorities. This happens with serial runner Emilie and train disruptor Joseph (Benjamin Lesieur) who insists on pulling the emergency cord at the same point on every trip.
We follow Bruno predominantly as he moves between multiple locations, constantly answering his phone, negotiating with accountants and bureaucrats or helping his team of counsellors with their daily care activities, all the time dealing with a myriad of developing issues.
Sometimes the issues are touching small moments, other times they can be humorous, while others are dramatic and compelling.
Directors and writers Olivier Nakache and Éric Toledano were responsible for the wildly popular 2011 comedy/drama The Intouchables, which also spawned US remake The Upside.
What makes The Extraordinary stand out is the perfectly balanced approach to comic and dramatic elements and almost guerrilla-style, naturalistic style of cinematography that the French do so well.
At the centre of everything is Cassel who gives a performance full of energy, pathos, humour and emotion that combines all the variance in his acting across a multitude of roles, beginning way back with La Haine, the film that first brought him to wide attention in 1995.
The Extraordinary is a terrific tribute to the power of human capacity to understand, support, challenge and love.