"Intouchables" in Rendez-Vous With French Cinema Festival In a coup, another French film, "The Artist," just won five Academy Awards, including best picture and best director as well as best actor for Jean Dujardin. Also over the weekend, the film picked up six Césars (the French equivalent of the Oscars). At that ceremony, Mr. Dujardin lost best actor to Omar Sy, one of the stars of "Intouchables," an interracial buddy comedy that has grossed nearly $240 million. It is now the second-highest grossing French movie ever (behind "Welcome to the Sticks"). But beneath the euphoria lurks the uneasy sense of déjà vu that shadowed the Oscars. So much of what is being shown is historically and aesthetically rooted in the past. What is the black-and-white, mostly silent "Artist" but a charming nostalgic divertissement? "Intouchables" is a crass escapist comedy that feels like a Gallic throwback to an "80s Eddie Murphy movie. This year's Rendez-Vous series, presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Unifrance, is larger than past editions, having expanded from Lincoln Center to the IFC Center in Greenwich Village and BAMcinématek in Brooklyn. The series, which continues through March 11, has added a new component, Rendez-Vous +, a potpourri of recent French documentaries and rarely screened classics. The official centerpiece, on March 7, is a restoration of Marcel Carné"s 1945 crown jewel of French cinema, "Children of Paradise." "Intouchables," the fourth feature by the writing and directing team of Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, is an old-fashioned feel-good tale, based on a true story, in which a Senegalese-born petty criminal from the projects takes a job as the caretaker of a quadriplegic millionaire and reinvigorates his life. The story of a black man who brings rhythm-and-blues and sex into a stuffy, white household exploits every hoary stereotype of the black man as cultural liberator. As Vivaldi and Berlioz give way to Earth, Wind and Fire, the wealthy patient (François Cluzet), who was disabled in a paragliding accident, gets his mojo back. And his lecherous, woman-ogling, recently imprisoned caretaker (Mr. Sy) coaxes him back into the sky for a paragliding adventure in which they are symbolically strapped together. Like "The Artist," "Intouchables" is being distributed in the United States by the Weinstein Company, which has set a May 25 commercial release. An American remake is in the works. If "Intouchables" gains box office traction in the United States, you can expect the same kind of aggressive awards campaign for Mr. Sy that Harvey Weinstein mounted to secure what many consider to be an undeserved best-actor statuette for the Italian comedian Roberto Benigni in the 1997 Holocaust comedy, "Life Is Beautiful." As always in the Rendez-Vous series, there are pleasures to be savored. Benoît Jacquot's moody period piece "Farewell, My Queen," adapted from Chantal Thomas's 2003 novel and filmed at Versailles, focuses on Marie Antoinette (Diane Kruger) as the French revolution gathers force and panic grips the court. By turns imperious, distraught, helpless, conniving and clueless, Ms. Kruger's queen is a much more fascinating character than the blank, passive one played by Kirsten Dunst in Sofia Coppola's "Marie Antoinette." Events are viewed through the eyes of the woman who reads to her, Sidonie Laborde (Léa Seydoux), who remains stubbornly loyal to the point of agreeing to risk her life by exchanging identities with the queen's lover, the Duchess Gabrielle de Polignac (Virginie Ledoyen), during an attempt to flee across the Swiss border. You can't take your eyes off the sultry, sloe-eyed Ms. Seydoux ("Inglourious Basterds," "Midnight in Paris"), whose Sidonie relishes posing as an aristocrat. André Téchiné"s "Unforgivable," based on a novel by Philippe Dijan and set in and around Venice, is one of the director's richest studies of the complex relationships displaying the Téchiné hallmarks of sexual fluidity and intergenerational coupling. The main characters are a crime novelist (André Dussolier); his real-estate agent, Judith (Carole Bouquet), a former model whom he impulsively marries; Judith's ex-lover, Anna Maria (Adriana Asti); and their troubled, angry offspring. Far from being shallow hedonists, these are passionate, willful and self-aware characters trying to make sense of their messy lives. One of the few movies that really feels contemporary is Delphine and Muriel Coulin's "17 Girls," in which an epidemic of deliberate pregnancies sweeps a provincial high school where rebellious 16- and 17- year-olds decide, without thinking it through, to become mothers and raise their children collectively. What starts out as a lark becomes a bittersweet comedy in which the girls, who regard the fathers as sperm donors and nothing more, eventually must face hard realities. Jean-François Laguionie's witty animated film "The Painting," takes place within the borders of an unfinished canvas whose characters represent a rigid caste system. There are snobbish Allduns (fully finished figures), frustrated Halfies (half-finished), and outcast Sketchies (outlines). As a rebellious couple (an Alldun and a Halfie) escape the canvas, the movie turns into an adventure as well as early-20th-century art history lesson. Some of the more anticipated movies disappoint. The closing-night selection, "Delicacy," the screen adaptation of a novel by David Foenkinos (who directed with his brother, Stéphane), is another ode to the quintessential French gamine Audrey Tautou. The story of a young widow who resists all romance before succumbing to an unglamorous older co-worker wears out its welcome as the courtship drags on and on. Especially disappointing is "38 Witnesses," Lucas Belvaux's follow-up to his gripping kidnapping thriller, "Rapt," one of the best movies of the 2010 Rendez-Vous series. Adapted from Didier Decoin's novel (inspired by the 1964 killing of Kitty Genovese), this study of neighbors in the same building who fail to report the screams of a murder victim outside their windows sustains an ominous mood while failing to develop compelling characters. Overall, the quality of this year's Rendez-Vous is about the same or maybe a little better than last year's. Which is to say that although there is nothing that insults your intelligence, entertainment matters more than art. More information on the series is available at rendezvouswithfrenchcinema.com.