Little White Lies

An enjoyable, if fluffy, evening at the multiplex began with “Little White Lies,” a sort of French “Big Chill” by Guillaume Canet, writer-director of “Tell No One.” After Ludo is critically injured in a motorcycle accident as the opening credits end (Jean Dujardin, choosing an odd follow-up to his “Artist” Oscar, gets the Kevin Costner part), his friends, who’d been about to depart for their annual month of vacation at the beach house of Max (François Cluzet) and Véro (Valérie Bonneton), decide to go ahead with just a fortnight of fun in the sun. The camarades include Gilles Lellouche as the overgrown man-child Eric, Benoît Magimel as the handsome osteopath Vincent, and Marion Cotillard as the much loved and desired but intimacy-phobic Marie.

The Intouchables

If the French box-office hit “The Intouchables” (another terrible title), about a paralyzed jillionaire who hires a black street tough as his caretaker, is supposed to be the feelgood movie of the summer, why did it make me so queasy? Oh, yeah – because it’s a minstrel show. Omar Sy plays Driss, the Senegalese small-timer whom François Cluzet’s Philippe picks for the job because of his ostensible indifference to it (he only shows up to his appointment to qualify for unemployment benefits) and the “lack of pity” his stuffy brother warns him is endemic to Driss’s type. Sy won a César for his performance, and I’m happy for him, but you may blanch when the filmmakers have Driss shuck and jive to Earth, Wind & Fire after taking childish potshots at Philippe’s beloved classical music.