Nationale 7

A home for physically handicapped. And next to it, a highway. René is fifty and nearly finished. Bitter, aggressive, detested by patients and carers alike, the victim of a terminal wasting disease. His well-worn cynicism proves useless against the simple compassion of his young nurse, Julie. René confides in her his one desire: to make love before the disease destroys him. From the ranks of prostitutes who work the highway, she finds him a lover, and René is transformed. Little by little, his newly awakened spirit and humanity infect his fellow sufferers - including a wheelchair-racing punk and a gay Moslem Johnny Halliday fan desperate to convert to Catholicism - much to the horror of their hypocritical warders. Jean-Pierre Sinapi's visceral, anarchic black comedy confronts and overturns a final taboo: the right of the handicapped to sex, love and life. Shot through with riotous, uncompromising humour and difficult truths, it shows us that it is not the disabled who are truly crippled. (Wild Bunch Distribution)