Self-deprecating, radiantly beautiful, with a clear demeanor: Omar Sy has asserted himself as an international actor and shows how much France has changed.
Of
Nadia Pantel
When Omar Sy made his international breakthrough in 2011 with “Pretty Best Friends”, he destroyed new Yorker the film on eleven lines. The review concluded with the sentence: “The entire film is an embarrassment.” It was one of those moments when liberal America looked at France as if one were living there in an unlit grotto. The rift between the two countries always opens up when it comes to racism. On the one hand, the USA, which precisely records the skin color and origin of its citizens, in the hope of fighting against discrimination. On the other hand, France, which is clinging to its self-image as a color-blind nation of the Enlightenment. And then he makes a film like “Pretty Best Friends”, which approaches racist prejudices in a similarly naive way as people traveling to Africa on safari. Sy plays Driss (poor, black, criminal family, always in a good mood) who gives a white, rich man in a wheelchair back the joy of life. True to the motto: You have nothing, but you are always happy. Or, like it the new Yorker writes: “The film looks at the wilderness and civilization that goes back to Rousseau with this peculiar French sentiment, and it is terribly condescending.”