Abstract:
The French Comedy Chacun Pour Tous (2018) tells the story of the French national team of Basketball ID (“Intellectual Disabilities”) participating in the 2000 Sydney Summer Paralympics. National coach Martin is desperately looking for capable members for his team; to create a competitive squad, he recruits additional non-disabled amateur basketball players, with whom the team eventually competes in Sydney. The narration deals with the individual experiences of the disabled and non-disabled players during the tournament. The film is based on true events: At the Sydney Paralympics 2000, the Spanish Basketball ID team won a gold medal with ten non-disabled players. The fraud was discovered, and the medal had to be given to the second place, Russia.
Details:
The film opens with Martin, coach of France’s national basketball ID team, desperately trying to recruit players for his team in disabled facilities after some members have left the team. In order to stay competitive and to preserve the French association for Basketball ID, Martin, initially against the wishes of his co-coach Sami, makes a plan to compete in the Paralympics with non-disabled players. The two places an ad and recruit amateur basketball players Stan, Pippo, André, Malik, and Michel in a banlieue. The group meets Martin’s plans with initial suspicion but eventually agrees to the plot. The plan is not confided (for now) to the remaining disabled players, Yohan and Freddie, nor to the team psychologist, Julia, who is also Yohan’s sister. In secret, Martin trains the new team members not only in basketball skills but also in a pseudo-disabled habitus and he is, which is supposed to help the team pass background checks. The players acquire supposedly disabled behaviours and successfully pass the entrance exam. Parallel to these preparations, Martin’s private life is shown, which is marked by the care of his physically disabled daughter Alice.
The team travels to Sydney, and the tournament begins. A gap between the disabled and non-disabled players, marked by a lack of understanding and hostility, can be overcome through sporting success and a slow bonding between the members. In particular, the Yohan-Stan and Freddie-Pippo relationships evolve into close and mindful friendships. Additionally, romances seem to develop between Stan and Yohan’s sister Julia and between Pippo and another athlete, Amie, who sits in a wheelchair.
At the same time, the entire team faces the challenge of not letting their façade fall, and situations repeatedly arise in which the team becomes conspicuous through “unusual” behaviour. Corresponding moments, for example, when Pippo, Stan, Yohan, and Freddie go to a party with other disabled athletes, repeatedly provide dicey situations. After the party, a one-night stand occurs between Pippo and Amie, with Pippo pretending to be non-disabled.
General suspicions rise among officials, journalists, and disabled players. The French team plays exceptionally well and sometimes wins by too much. During the semi-final, Julia discovers the newly recruited players are not disabled. Horrified, she confronts Martin, who does not want to see the faults in his actions. Drunk Julia tells the secret to a Russian stranger in a hotel bar - who does not understand her since she speaks French. Stan seeks Julia out to talk to her about the secret and put it into perspective, to which she does not respond. Martin gets drunk with the non-handicapped players in a bar the night before the final. Freddie begins a romance with a Russian player, Paprika. Julia seeks to talk to Stan and Pippo, and the three make up. As Martin talks to his daughter on the phone, it dawns on him that winning the finals would mean too much attention. He tells the team to lose on purpose.
At first, everything goes according to plan. The other final team, Russia, is in the lead at halftime. Julia then finds out that the Russian team is also non-disabled - her flirt from the bar the day before, who was obviously not disabled, is one of the players. Accordingly, the team changes tactics: instead of playing badly on purpose, all members get the best out of each other and eventually defeat the Russian team by two free throws of Yohan. With the final win, however, the team flies off the handle. A horde of journalists confronts Martin at the airport - he sends his staff on the plane and faces the press.
