L'intouchable

A young French actress (Isild LeBesco) finds out from her mother that her biological father was Indian. So she decides to go to India to look for any traces of him.

Isild LeBesco is one of the more interesting young French actresses, even if this isn't one of her more interesting movies, aside from some travelogue footage of parts of India only your most adventurous tourist would ever set foot in. LeBesco is definitely talented, and unlike her American peers, she rarely takes a role she isn't willing to do full-frontal nudity for (she's kind of like a French Kate Winslet). To finance her trip to India in this movie, for instance, her actress character agrees to do a gratuitous nude scene in a sleazy movie. Ironically, this scene in THIS movie is also rather gratuitous, as is a later scene in India where her character gets a naked rubdown. But, hey, LeBesco is a cute girl with a great body, so who am I to complain if she wants to show it off in typical Gallic fashion?

Besides the interesting, um, scenery though, this is not a very dramatically compelling movie. LeBesco's character sits next to an "untouchable" on the plane who meets a bad fate. She accompanies one half of a gay male couple to a nunnery to meet his sister where other "untouchables" have taken refuge. There's an obvious parallel here about LeBesco's character being a kind of "untouchable" on account of her uncertain parentage (never mind that the actress herself looks very, very touchable). The message though remains pretty muddled, despite the usual solid acting effort by LeBesco. This movie is not without interest, but it's not great either.