Thursday 11th September
UNEASY RIDERS
(Jean-Pierre Sinapi, France, 2000, 95 mins)

Uneasy Riders is a fresh and filthy award-winning French comedy about sex and the disabled. Sinapi's caustic, no-budget, French comedy tackles the subject of sex and disability with enough lusty wit and tender intimacy to shatter the topic's taboo status once and for all. The film is based on a true story from a Toulon hospice, where Rene, the main character, is 50 and nearly finished. Bitter, aggressive, loathed by patients and carers alike, he is the victim of a terminal wasting disease. But his rage-fuelled cynicism is no match for the simple compassion of his young nurse, Julie. Rene confides in her his one desire: to make love before the disease destroys him. Julie's response brings about a transformation not just in Rene, but in his fellow inmates too. Writer-director Sinapi manages to tackle the thorny subject of sex and disability with candour, aplomb, and integrity in this refreshing and wryly comic debut. Challenging the very notion of disability and the way in which society perpetuates its prejudices (filmed on digital video the film has something of the look of a docu-drama), Sinapi utilises verite-style hand-held camera to create an affecting immediacy and intimacy, all the while eschewing the sentimentality and empty didacticism so often to be found in films of this nature.

back