WRITERS/directors Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, and actor Omar Sy come together to tell this tale based on actual events (a clip showing its two real-life protagonists backs the closing credits).

Sy, a babe-magnet if ever there was one, plays Idriss, an unemployed Senegalese who attends a job interview to get enough signatures to validate his application for welfare, but gets the gig caring for wealthy quadriplegic Phillipe – feeding, bathroom duties, chauffeuring, dressing.

Boring, did somebody say? No way. Driss doesn’t fit the conventional carer mould. Nor is Phillipe (Francois Cluzet) a conventional patient (it helps that he can afford the freewheeling, extreme-sports lifestyle that put him a wheelchair).

Phillipe lives in a Paris apartment where chatelaine Yvonne (Anne le Ny) and amanuensis Magalie (Audrey Fleurot) manage his needs. Phillipe admires women and this pair decorate the film admirably. Without physical sensation or mobility south of his cervical vertebra, Phillipe has learned to manage the constant anguish of inner life and its memories. The film’s main engine is Driss’ creative caring style. In return, Phillipe shows Driss a social, intellectual and cultural lifestyle that a black man from the ghetto might never have heard about, much less visited.

The film explores a friendship that grew to be warm, funny and compassionate. Within three months of release, it was a hit despite some bad reviews in Britain. Feelgood cinema rather than magnificent, it pressed my buttons – I’ve seen it twice.

 At Dendy and Capitol 6