Customer Reviews

The Untouchable

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THE UNTOUCHABLE requires patience on the part of the viewer - patience to stay with this sullen, dark and clunky film to the end only to discover the wait was not worth the patience! Writer/director Benoît Jacquot had a good idea: trace the search for a biological father to a country foreign to the seeker. What results instead of a journey of self-discovery is a travelogue to India as captured by a hand held camera with what appears to be a minuscule budget.

Jeanne (Isild Le Besco) discovers on her eighteenth birthday that her mother (Bérangère Bonvoisin) conceived her on the banks of the Ganges River in India with an Indian man who remains unknown. Furious at her mother's secret and feeling the profound need to connect with her biological father, Jeanne, an actress, leaves her acting workshop to make a racy film in order to make enough money to travel to India. Once in India she searches for traces of her father without success. But the search is not without some interest for the viewer: the hand held camera that follows her through the airport and the countryside and to Benares (that city by the Ganges where the dead are cremated in elaborate fashion and the living bathe in the waters of the holy river). She gathers clues as to her father's identity from friendly strangers, but alas, the riddle remains unsolved.

Isild Le Besco is in practically every frame of this film and she indeed is an interesting actress to watch. But the lack of intelligent dialogue prevents this film from revealing motivations or character development, opting instead for a static (and rather poorly edited and scored) glance at the mysteries of India. For those interested in watching in detail the preparation of bodies for cremation and the slow act of that ritual, this is a film worth watching. For the casual viewer it is tedious. Grady Harp, July 08

Watching The Untouchable, I tried to figure out why this film was ever made; what was it's reason for being. The only solution I could come up with, the director loves Isild Le Besco and wanted to spend time with her; and he wanted to travel to India.

The film starts in Paris. It's not exactly clear how Jeanne (Isild Le Besco) supports herself, is she a major diva actress, is she a starving artist, or does she just go from bed to bed to support herself? No matter, one night in a drunken stupor her mother tells her this incredible story about how an Indian man picked her up by the Ganges river and nine months later, Jeanne was born. Her father is this mysterious very rich Indian man.

So Jeanne decides to go off to India to find her roots. But, everyone she sleeps with wants to give her money, but she refuses. So she makes a film, well there's a bedroom scene in the film. She wants the set cleared while she has sex with the actor. So here's the first reason this film was made, the director gets to have close ups of her during the act. Oh the inhumanity, the pain she feels doing this so she can go to India.

The last two thirds of this one hour twenty minute film is her travelling in India. Nothing but shot after shot of crowded places, people that help her, and some random men that eventually turn out to be potentially related to her. Oh it's all just so implausible.

I just didn't see much to redeem this film. Isild is pleasant to look at, especially in the Paris scenes. The scenes of Paris are beautiful. The intimate scene is good. The scenes in India get old after about five minutes, the crowded streets, the smoke, the dirt, I could almost smell the awful smell. And the ending is just so dumb. Technically, there isn't much going on in this film.

Presented in French with English subtitles. The DVD includes the movie, no bonus features.

I've been on an Isild Le Besco film festival these past few weeks, (A Tout de Suite, and Girls Can't Swim). I'm begining to believe that French directors are in love with her, and get lost making a good film because they are so blinded by her presence. There is a formula to all her films. She is alluring, but that is just not enough to carry a film.

What to say about this self-indulgent, uninteresting film? It has the intellectual sophistication of an undergraduate film-school project that is trying to be profound and just comes off trite. Worst of all, it provides an inaccurate and shallow picture of India and its culture.

If you are, as the main character in the film - a self-absorbed, 20 something who wallows incessantly in your own emotional states - you might find this film interesting.

As someone who has lived in India and who has many Indian friends, I was particularly concerned about the social interactions and imperialistic outlook, which could potentially misguide foreign travelers in India. For example, her Indian "brother" never would have taken the girl's hand, especially at a wedding - his sister's wedding, no less. Indian men are not supposed to touch other women (not saying they never do ... just that they would not do it at a family wedding!). Also, it is highly doubtful the mom would have allowed the father to be alone in a room with the girl after she fainted. Very unlikely scenario. And the scene where the servant girl told the woman - a white European woman - to disrobe ... would never happen. The director, script writers and actors put a French flavor into their interpretation of India that I found irksome. In short, watch this film if you want to learn more about the French culture, not the Indian culture! ;)