Intouchables

I think about loneliness. I think about our European society and its cast system. I think about how difficult it is to find someone who truly gets you. I think of how easy it is to lose people we love in just an instant...

I started thinking while I was still watching the "Intouchables" last night. I was thinking all night and all day today. The movie made me want to look deeper into our human nature.

The story isn't so original after all. We witness fairy tale plots everyday and they all look alike. But this one, could be because it is inspired by a true story, is very special and extraordinary. There are two main characters: Philippe and Driss. Philippe is a rich aristocrat, who is paralyzed physically and emotionally. Driss is a young black man who has just been to prison, paralyzed socially, if I may say so. Both unhappy, both looking for happiness, so different they were destined to meet and change each other's lives.

What makes Philippe and Driss become friends after all? Is their friendship even possible? These two extremes balance each other and in the balance they find new ways to see happiness, new ways to see life.

The first thing you notice is the social gap between Philippe and Driss. The first one is so full of money he buys a 40 thousand euro painting without thinking. The other one doesn't know what he's going to eat for dinner. You can feel this social gap with your every cell. How judgemental are Philippe's friends and even his daughter. For all of them, for this high society Driss is a miserable and a dangerous cockroach, plaguing their lives. Yet what they cannot see is the great humanity behind Driss's mask of a harsh man. True, he has no pity for Philippe and his handicap. No pity is the key to what is going to change their lives. Its acceptance of what they really are. Both paralyzed in their miserable lives, finding an escape, helping each other.

The film goes beyond all the social stereotypes and unveils the true face of the French society with all its problems. I have to say the political aspect of the movie has a lot of weight now in the view of the presidential elections in France. Does it also talk about the illegal immigration and its consequences? Surely it does. Does it show us the problems we have to balance within our society? Yes, it does. Do we really need to stop cataloguing people into casts? Do we need to have more compassion? I leave these questions for you to think about.

The problem of the french self-identity (social, cultural, political and religious) has been widely discussed in the past few years. Yes, the country is going through a deep crisis, while its important values are in great danger. While a film is only a film, it can also help us to dream. Especially because sometimes dreams come true.

Priority

The first time I came across this novel about 8-9 years ago in a library. It was when I took another issue of the Russian monthly magazine "Foreign literature". I was a university student at the time and did not have a lot of time for obsessive reading. But this was the case. I did not watch the time and was completely dissolved in the book. I felt I had a rare chance to travel through the time to a parallel reality, where only I could go. I spent the whole night reading and re-reading every line in the book. I imagined to live in Copenhagen - just like Delphine (the main character) - where I could see the four city towers. I could feel all the pain, inexplicable passion and delicacy the novel was transmitting. That night the book blazed up inside of me and kept on burning.

During all these years Delphine lived inside of me. I found myself using her words to speak and her eyes to look on the world. And I kept missing this incredible feeling the novel left in my heart. Some months ago I realized I had to re-read "Priority". A couple of days ago the book was delivered. As soon as I opened it and started reading the first lines I was dissolved in it again.

The storyline in the novel is very simple yet romantic. Two lonely strangers start writing letters to each other. This correspondence evolves with time: at first there is an almost imperceptible attraction growing into an electric tension growing into the feeling of euphoria and love. Two strangers living in different countries... what do they have in common?

Throughout the whole novel we percept that both Delphine and Jean-Luc are very delicate and gentle people with a very subtle view on the world. Every letter is filled with love to life and at the same time - melancholy and grief over life they are never going to have. They both have an amazing capacity of seeing art everywhere which makes their letters so weightless, almost unearthly. These two people are not living in the reality, and it makes us want to stay a little bit longer in their imaginary world.

There are colours everywhere in the novel: there is the grey of Copenhagen and the yellow of Cannes. They both imagine travelling together to Rome, Paris and Venice, finding their own place in every city. These travels are not so much romantic as they are erotic in their description.

You feel eroticism in every line of the novel, even when it seems there is none. The author Iselin Hermann fantasises of undressing Delphine with Jean-Luc's hands. She fantasises of having them together in the same hotel in Sweden: naked and passionate. Fantasies of love and sex so rare and subtle in their description you can hardly find anything similar in the modern prose.

What makes the novel so special? There is of course the sensual, erotic way of narration. But what makes us look in depth of the novel is the storyline itself and its characters. Who are they? We don't know anything about Delphine but it feels like we know her. She is honest and she's not hiding anything. But when it comes to Jean-Luc... who is he really? Is he a famous married artist or a simple post office employee? Maybe he is a lonely young man longing for love, thinking he is undeserving of it? Will Delphine be able to love him just as he is? Will she ever forgive him?

The end of the novel, like the novel itself if very well-thought. Hermann tears off the mask from this ephemeral correspondence of two complete strangers and shows us a harsh, cold reality. The kind of reality we don't want to know after having travelled through the fantasy land. And yet the author shows us the downside of reality, its worries and its grief. In the end we wish we could go back in time and have another happier ending for Delphine and Jean-Luc.

I highly recommend the novel to all men of any age. I recommend it to men in hope that they will understand the delicacy of the woman's soul. I hope they will understand how important it is not to break a woman's heart and her hopes.