Writers & Directors
Olivier Nakache & Éric Toledano

Starring
Vincent Cassel, Reda Kateb, Benjamin Lesieur, Bryan Mialoundama

This heart-warming film is the follow up from the directorial pair that brought us French hit, The Intouchables.

Nakache and Toledano continue with themes of disability, connection and men as carers. Based on a true story, The Extraordinary follows the day to day lives of two men making great personal sacrifice to give hope and care to teens and adults with severe autism. Taking on cases that other institutions would either reject or highly medicate in order to manage, the pair, along with their young and inexperienced team, are making huge differences to family’s lives.

The film touchingly explores the world and challenges of disability care and the bureaucracy that stands in the way of providing care and hope to disabled people and their families. The film sheds a light on these challenges and does an admirable job of highlighting the gaps in our care systems that allow so many teens and young adults to simply slip through the cracks.

I must say, it is always deeply refreshing to see men portrayed in societal roles so often dominated by women. The Extraordinary serves as an important agent of socialisation for expanding the idea of what it means to be a man. That men can also selflessly care for people and provide comfort to the needy. That the traits, so often attributed to women, can in fact, be found in any person, regardless of gender. This might be one of the reasons I enjoyed the film so much.

If I have one criticism of The Extraordinary, it’s that we receive little to no insight into the characters with autism, the characters felt very underdeveloped. Whilst I recognise the film had opposing needs to satisfy, the need for authenticity and the need for connection to the audience, I feel that more could have been done to add dimension to characters like Joseph, played beautifully by Benjamin Lesieur, who sadly seemed to become the film’s comic relief.

All in all, The Extraordinary is an easy film to watch. It’s a light-hearted take on some serious subject matter. There is depth, there is humour and there is love in this film.

3 stars

Viewer Discretion
M (Mature themes and coarse language)

Trailer
The Extraordinary

Moviedoc thanks Madman for providing the screener link to watch and review this film.

The Extraordinary is now available on Digital and via DVD from June 8.

Review by Jemma Grace for Moviedoc

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