Samba, film review: Predictable plotting but this romantic comedy has heart and charm
(15) Eric Toledano, Olivier Nakache, 118 mins. Starring: Omar Sy, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Tahar Rahim
With its brutal cops and undocumented immigrant workers trying to keep out of the authorities' way, Samba could easily have been made as a grim social-realist fable.
Instead, the film-makers Eric Toledo and Olivier Nakache (the team behind 2011's runaway box-office hit Untouchable) make the film as a gentle romantic comedy. The main character Samba (Omar Sy) is a Senegalese dishwasher threatened with deportation. Charlotte Gainsbourg is the high-flying businesswoman who has had a burnout and who volunteers at the local immigration centre during her recovery.
The plotting is predictable but the film has heart and charm all the same. Sy plays Samba with a sense of wounded innocence, as a decent man who can't understand how bureaucracy can be so cruel. Tahar Rahim is appealing in an artful-dodger sort of way as an Algerian immigrant who pretends to be Brazilian because he thinks it will give him better luck with girls and jobs.
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