QUARTET (2012) UK comedy-drama, directed by Dustin Hoffman, starring Maggie Smith, Tom Courtenay, Pauline Collins, Michael Gambon, Billy Connolly. 98 min. Rated 12A.

Dustin Hoffman’s directorial debut stars Tom Courtenay, Billy Connolly and Pauline Colllins as opera singers living in a retirement home for gifted musicians. Diva Maggie Smith’s arrival upsets the equilibrium, with both comedic and dramatic results.

The film is released in the UK on 1st January 2013 and is already being called this year’s Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

The Guardian calls Quartet, which opened at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival, “a love letter to elderly thesps,” with “a view of old age that would cheer even the most pessimistic.”

A fitting finale to Hayle Film Club's first season. Encore!

THE INTOUCHABLES (2011) French comedy-drama, directed by Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, starring Francois Cluzet, Omar Sy and Anne Le Ny. 112 min. Rated 15. (In French, with English subtitles.)

Welcome to the most successful French film ever released -- 60% of everyone in France saw The Intouchables (also called Untouchable) in late 2010-11. It was similarly successful across Europe (grossing over €300), but for some reason the UK is the last to see it. And a treat it is for Hayle, since this film was not screened in the local cinemas.

Following an accident that leaves him a quadriplegic, a rich, white Parisian (Francois Cluzet) hires a black man from the ghetto (Omar Sy) to look after him -- and the film follows the development of their unlikely relationship.

The Intouchables is often compared to Driving Miss Daisy. Each has its own view of racial stereotypes -- though it's clear that the French production is more of a soothing, and entertaining, fantasy.

"This uplifting tale about an unlikely class-busting friendship between an aristocratic quadriplegic living in a central Paris palace and a black guy from the wrong side of the Peripherique was dismissed by some UK critics. Surely a case of hard fromage -- it isn't hard to see why Untouchable was the second-highest grossing French film ever. The two central performances -- Francois Cluzet as the cravat-wearing Philippe, and Omar Sy as the magnetic, irreverent Driss -- are unforgettably good, the direction energetic and never mawkish. A triumph."

***** -- Rebecca Rose, The Financial Times