Forms of representation in Untouchable

Untouchable is a French film created in 2011. The film's story focuses around a low class man named Driss who finds himself working as a caretaker for a paralyzed rich Aristocrat named Philippe, which allows them to bond a strong friendship with each other despite coming from exact opposites of life. Because of the many themes this film touches on, there are a lot of aspects of society and types of people that are seen represented. One of the most noticeable aspects that the film represents is the look into of class. Driss comes from a very low class background, moments before he is hired he was without a home, and he had very little even before then, as we see the home containing his family is very small, and run down, such as their bath not working properly when the faucet runs, when he is hired and gets his home commodities, we see a contrast scene to the scene where his bath stops working, where we see him in a much more expensive, larger and more high quality bath. There is a somewhat positive look on the representation of class. As despite Driss' background, they hire him anyway, they even portray a difference in class realistically in that there are some characters that come up to Philippe and suggest how Driss is not the kind of person that should be taking care of Phillipe. Another form of representation that actually connects greatly to the representation of class is the representation of race. An obvious fact you can see in the film is that all of the characters who are upper are not black, and the vast majority are white, and likewise, all of the lower class characters, and characters who are flat out homeless are either black or a minority. Driss himself is a character that actually has a lot of negative stereotypes that relate to his race, such as him and his family living in the hood, he regularly steals things (Seen when he first goes to job application) and he also acts very aggressive and impulsive. The film uses these stereotypes of black people against itself however, as despite all these qualities, we see him accept the job and gladly be accepted by his co workers, like they would with any other person. So despite the predominantly white, upper class work space that Driss is working in, he is still treated as an equal, and the people Driss works with actually ends up improving some aspects of their life, such as Driss' adamant nature encourages Philippe to meet the woman he spoke to but never met before, and also encourages him to stand up against his daughter. There might be a subtext message here saying that the two vastly different walks of life interacting and meeting with each other allows them to improve each other and become better people. This is also true for Driss' case, there is a contrasting scene at the beginning and the end of the film where we see Driss ask two different people to park the car out of the drive way, in the first scene we see him aggressively pick up the person out of his car and pushes him against the wall to threaten him, but in the second scene which is near the very end of the film, we see him politely ask the person to drive out of the way. Representation of the disabled is also a very major part of the film. The film appears to have very positive representation of the disabled. The disabled man Philippe is a very normal acting character despite his complete paralysis of the body, we see that there are of course limitations to Philippe due to his circumstances, as he constantly needs someone to take care of him. However he is not completely dependant on his caretakers all the time. The film also gives a very positive representation on the disabled in the ending of the film, where we see that Philippe gets to finally meet the woman she likes, this sends a message to viewers that disabled people are not limited by their disability to make relationships. The same sort of idea comes from the friendship Driss and Philippe create, Philippe's disability has very little to do with why their friendship forms, and that shows how much of a normal person Philippe is despite his disability.