Samba

Ernst Lubitsch taught us how much can economically and elegantly be established in cinema by following plates of food into the kitchen.

Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, wisely taking this storytelling cue, escort a wedding cake, after the bride made the first cut, back into the kitchen of the hotel, and then further and further into the bowel of the kitchen where we first encounter our hero, Samba Cissé (Omar Sy), originally from Senegal, illegally living in France for ten years, washing dishes. Something goes wrong, he ends up in a detention centre and is told he has to leave the country.

Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg), a freshly minted volunteer at an immigration advocacy center, follows her more experienced colleague Manu (Izïa Higelin), a law student with a love for piercings and rules to be broken, to meet with Samba in an attempt to help him stay in France and become a chef.

An interesting tweed coat, a seemingly make-up free face, classic pumps, and impeccable comedic timing go a long way. Gainsbourg's Alice holds all of the above and when Samba tells her he is fine but a little hungry, their undeniable chemistry starts to work its magic. She unearths from her handbag, which also holds an unholy amount and variety of sleeping pills, a power bar for him to eat. "Musk?" he asks. "No, it's whole wheat," she responds. Her intoxicating perfume won't be forgotten.

Smells and sweets (including a lime and basil macaroon) and turns of phrases stay with the characters and bond them together, as they would in real life. Jokes in many comedies are one-trick ponies. In Samba, the calming effect of petting ponies - and horses, for that matter - follows through until the very end. Alice has ended up here, after taking a time out from her corporate job after an incident that included her hurling an inattentive colleague's cellphone at his head and pulling out some hair.

"I blew a fuse," she calls it. Samba, advised to "keep a low profile," in this hellish limbo of a situation, takes on a number of jobs to survive and send money back to his mother in Senegal. He is a night security guard at a shopping mall where he gets beaten up, sorts foul smelling paper from plastic at a conveyor belt at a garbage recycling plant, and is plagued by vertigo (as are the viewers) perched perilously in a contraption outside a skyscraper at La Defense, cleaning windows with his pal Wilson (Tahar Rahim). Wilson, Samba's "first Arab-Brazilian friend," has identity tactics of his own and some impressive dance moves high above the city.

In Samba, the difficulty of getting through this life with some sense of dignity connects them all. Nakache and Toledano have succeeded brightly, never losing the humanity and humour, as they tell a critical story of today.