A scene from the film Samba. Photo / Facebook
The new film by the writer-director duo behind the 2011 hit The Intouchables is not as formulaic and manipulative but it lacks the single-minded coherence that was so crucial to that film's success.
It's an odd-couple comedy too, but the screenplay shoehorns in a third (Rahim, who dazzled in A
Prophet) so it becomes an awkward buddy comedy that even resorts to re-enacting a famous Coca-Cola ad.
More problematically still, its occasional nods to the serious subtexts of the story - the plight of illegal immigrants - seem calculated rather than heartfelt: it's okay to have a laugh at their expense, it seems to say, so long as we do some po-faced handwringing as well.
Gainsbourg, cast wildly against her vivacious and sexy type, is Alice, a mousy newcomer to a not-for-profit immigration advice service (she has a back story, but we don't learn it for more than an hour, so its dramatic impact falls flat). Her co-worker's advice to "keep your distance" is still ringing in her ears when she, in a jarringly inexplicable act, gives her phone number to Samba (Sy), a veteran Senegalese illegal.
Yep, you do know how it's going to end, but the course of a true-love comedy never did run less smoothly than this one. Arrested and faced with deportation, Samba looks to Alice for help. The story that unfolds is both contrived and predictable but it's also very messily structured, dashing without warning up narrative side roads - the last 10 minutes are reminiscent of someone trying to close an overstuffed suitcase.
