Samba (2014)
Directed by Olivier Nakache, Eric Toledano

Film Review

Intouchables (2011) was always going to be a hard act to follow.  The most commercially successful French film to date (indeed the highest grossing non-English language film so far), this was a rare example of a mainstream French hit which went on to achieve massive global success.  They say that lightning never strikes twice in the same spot and directors Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano prove just that with their similar socially themed comedy follow-up to their worldwide money-spinner.  Samba may be just as worthy as Intouchables, in that it confronts head-on the most pressing social concern in France today, namely immigration, but, lacking the courage of its convictions, it fails to have the authenticity and crowd-pulling appeal of its predecessor.  It's an enjoyable, middle-of-the-road comedy-drama that makes some astute observations on France's immigration problems but it struggles to find anything meaningful to say and has nothing like the impact of 2011's box office winner.

Based on Delphine Coulin's 2011 novel Samba pour la France, Nakache and Toledano's latest social comedy sets out to replicate the most successful ingredient of Intouchables, an improbable relationship between two individuals from very different worlds, by partnering the star of that film, Omar Sy, with perennial favourite Charlotte Gainsbourg.  It's a bold, some would say wildly eccentric, pairing and had a little more effort gone in to developing Gainsbourg's character, it might conceivably have worked as well as the magnificent Sy-François Cluzet double act in Intouchables.  The most disappointing aspect of Samba is that Gainsbourg's character starts out as a vaguely sketched caricature (a stressed out executive who turns to voluntary work as a kind of therapy) and never really develops into a fully fledged human being.  By contrast, Sy's character is admirably drawn, and convincingly played by one of French cinema's most charismatic new talents.  This imbalance becomes painfully apparent in the film's second half as Nakache and Toledano struggle to develop a convincing romantic rapport between Sy and Gainsbourg's characters.  It is at this point that the film begins to flounder and lose both its focus and its sense of purpose.  The lack of any real chemistry between the leads also has the effect of dimming the emotional resonance of the later sequences, which feel more saccharine than truthful.

The film may struggle to keep going much beyond its mid-point but it is very effective in its first half, which offers some dark insights into the way in which France treats its illegal immigrants.  The latter are basically an unseen, unwanted underclass, exploited by the unscrupulous and living in constant fear of deportation - something that carries strong echoes of life under Nazi occupation during WWII.  When the intensely likeable Samba is taken into custody he finds himself in a Kafkaesque limbo existence that only the French, with their love of soul-destroying, nit-picking bureaucracy, could bring into being.  Some well-judged comic interludes (some featuring an excellent Tahar Rahim in a rare comedic role) punctuate what is essentially a bleak narrative that puts in doubt France's claim to be a civilised, forward-looking nation.

Concerns about race, immigration and integration have assumed paramount importance in the French psyche over the past decade, leading to a surge in xenophobia and political backlash that has benefited the extreme rightwing parties such as the Front National.  A more overtly populist film, Qu'est-ce qu'on a fait au Bon Dieu, has made easy capital from these concerns and is likely to be the most popular French film of 2014, having already stormed its way into the top ten of the most successful French films to date.  In their far more considered and intelligent film, Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano probe more deeply but still fail to come grips with the heart of the matter, a crisis of national identity combined with a lack of willingness to face up to the realities of mass migration in the 21st century.

Samba gives a human face to the 'invisible' hoards that are apparently swarming across our borders, and in doing so it helps to increase our awareness of how ugly western society is becoming (France is by no means the only country with an immigration problem), but it only scratches the surface of a complex and profoundly worrying phenomenon.  In their defence, Nakache and Toledano would argue that their remit is to entertain, not lecture, and in this at least they are successful.  Samba is an amiable (albeit somewhat uneven and overlong) crowdpleaser, hilariously funny in places, but the fact remains that it could have been so much more.  What is reveals is only the minutest tip of a terrifyingly large iceberg.

Film Synopsis

Samba is a Senegalese immigrant man who has been living in France for ten years, surviving on odd jobs as he somehow manages to avoid the authorities.  His luck finally runs out and he now faces deportation.  At a detainment centre in Paris, his case is taken up by Alice, a volunteer worker recovering from a severe nervous breakdown after being in a high-pressured office job for 15 years.  As Alice helps Samba to obtain authorisation to stay in France she finds herself emotionally drawn to him.  Could this be the start of a beautiful friendship?