Presque

Brief summary

When it comes up at a meeting in a funeral home that the body of a deceased person has to be driven from Lausanne, Switzerland, to the south of France, director Louis immediately raises himself. Such a repatriation is not part of his duties and his agenda is packed, but he immediately dismisses the objections of his employees: "I can certainly drive a hearse." Although he has a personal reason, Louis's main motivation seems to be the ride itself. It is never spoken aloud, but everything shows that he enjoys being alone for a day.

Not incomprehensible. Because although he is good at his job, it largely consists of contact with the dying and surviving relatives. That requires some tact and preferably as little of his own personality as possible. It is typical, for example, that he is asked twice whether he believes in God and that he gives a different answer each time, depending on how his interlocutor thinks about this.

However, he is not allowed to be alone, because Louis is barely on his way when it turns out that the hearse has a stowaway on board: Igor, a disabled man who has shown an above-average interest in Louis since a traffic accident a few days earlier. That interest is not exactly mutual, but because the grumpy funeral director is not completely heartless, he accepts his passenger with mild reluctance.

So much for the fairly conventional setup for what will turn out to be a fairly conventional film. It is not difficult to find traces of films such as Le Huitième Jour, Yo Tambien and even Rain Man in Presque. A scene in which the central two manage to act out from a traffic fine also seems to have been copied very well from Intouchables. And yet Presque occasionally manages to find a slightly different approach to a story that seems to have been told often enough.

This is largely due to the character Igor, who, like his interpreter (also co-director and co-writer) Alexandre Jollien, was born with cerebral palsy. This manifests itself in poor motor coordination and speech problems, but that does not mean that he is retarded. Because of his excessive interest in philosophy (also inherited from his interpreter) he shakes up the necessary wisdom. Although he cannot get a cup of coffee from a machine without making a mess, he can tell you all about Nietzsche, Spinoza and Descartes.

That makes for an interesting inversion of the dynamics that are common in these types of films. In Presque, it is the 'normal' protagonist who lives more in the here and now, while his unusual counterpart does not fully represent childlike innocence. Rather, he is an attic academic who is somewhat alienated from the world, even though he is not averse to human contact. Meanwhile, Igor struggles with a certain form of fear of contamination, but he is self-aware enough to recognize its irrationality and even describe it with a surefire metaphor.

It is especially admirable that Igor is not only there to show Louis a brighter side of life, but that he is also undergoing a certain development himself. It is also nice that almost everyone in the film treats Igor politely, instead of making fun of him or treating him like a small child. At a bachelor party, a group of women seem to be more surprised by Louis's profession than by Igor's disability.

The flip side of all that harmony is that it's all pretty well behaved. A little more friction between the central two would have been nice and would have benefited the final feel-good factor. Louis is mostly bothered by Igor's unplanned presence rather than his handicap, but he never really gets in the way. The only time Igor really jeopardizes his work comes from extremely forced writing.

Taking into account the premise (two opposites, one of whom is disabled, on the way with a corpse) it is striking that Presque is pleasantly subdued, while he could also have provided plenty of corny scenes. Even a scene with a prostitute is presented with striking taste. Presque therefore seeks connection with well-known French feel-good films such as Intouchables, La Famille Bellier and Hors Normes, of which it is probably no coincidence that they are all about people with disabilities. You can find something about that, but as long as these films contribute to more acceptance of people with disabilities, that is probably needless cynicism.