‘Beautiful Minds’ may initially be reminiscent of films like ‘Rain Man’ and ‘The Intouchables’; just like the former, it brings together two people who are unlikely to end up together on a journey. From the French box-office hit comedy it takes the process by which one man brings another back to life. The unlikely couple starring in this film, which has been a hit in French cinemas, only surpassed by ‘Spider-Man’ on the weekend of its release, is made up of an undertaker and a man suffering from a neuromotor disability.
The first has a perfectly organized existence. He is an efficient professional in his trade, who always uses the right word for clients who have just lost a loved one. Separated and childless, his life is his job. His whole world will be blown up the day he runs over an organic fruit delivery man who is risking his life with his tricycle between cars. Despite walking as if he were going to fall apart and speaking in a way that betrays that he is suffering from cerebral palsy, the victim has a wise and vital speech peppered with quotes from philosophers. Chance and curiosity will lead them to undertake a journey together to transport the body of a woman and the ashes of her son who died some time ago.
The adventure aboard the hearse will include an encounter with a hitchhiker on her bachelorette party, an understanding prostitute and a funeral with a surprising twist at the end. It sounds like the good vibes of ‘The Intouchables’, but ‘Beautiful Minds’ has another, less comical tone, which over the course of an hour and a half manages to make us go from smiles to emotions. The original title in French, ‘Presque’ (almost), provides clues: one of the protagonists is ‘almost’ normal. Bernard Campan and Alexandre Jollien are the directors and actors of the film, which won the Audience Award in the International Premieres section of the last Malaga Festival.
Jollien, a very popular philosopher and writer in France, almost plays himself. Born in Switzerland, he suffered from athetosis which caused neuromotor disability due to a lack of oxygen during childbirth when he strangled himself with the umbilical cord. A priest friend encouraged him as a boy to overcome his difficulties with the help of philosophical readings. Over time, he became a writer and populariser with bestsellers such as ‘The Profession of Being a Man’ and ‘The Naked Philosopher’. Bernard Campan saw him on television twenty years ago and was fascinated by his speech and communication skills. They became friends and ended up making a film, despite Jollien’s fear of acting.
«I was deeply moved when I heard him; he spoke of a philosophy of life oriented towards the interior, towards the art of living. I moved heaven and earth to find his phone number and I got in touch with him,» Campan said in Malaga. The title of the film was chosen by Jollien. «We all have difficulties in integrating this reality of disability. We are always judging others, constructing this reality to our measure and not realising that the true one is always a little further ahead, a little further back or a little further to the side. The ‘almost’ is reality.»
‘Beautiful Minds’ shows, without being instructive or didactic, how we react to someone different, driven by our prejudices. It is a ‘feel good movie’ that is not ashamed of being one and that does not treat the viewer like an idiot. “I am like Igor, but when it came to approaching him, my wife’s advice helped me a lot: she told me to turn him into this universal being that represents fragility, stigmatization and isolation,” says Alexandre Jollien. “To be the voice of those who do not have one, even though in real life, and in the space of a few minutes, you can feel rejection and then meet a person on the street who has been saved by my books.”
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