Les témoins (2007)
(The Witnesses)
Country: FR
Technical: col/2.35:1 112m
Director: André Téchiné
Cast: Emmanuelle Béart, Michel Blanc, Sami Bouajila, Julie Depardieu, Johan Libéreau
Synopsis:
An unconventional couple have a baby: the father dotes on the child, the mother, a children's author, attempts to shut it out in order to work. Into their lives, via a gay doctor acquaintance, comes free-spirited Manu, who spurns the latter's advances and then embarks on a torrid affair with the father, a police lieutenant in charge of the vice squad clamping down on the area where Manu resides.
Review:
Once again Téchiné focuses on edgy material, in this case the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic during the mid 1980s and its effect on swinging French society of the time. Notable is the character of Mehdi, who on the one hand sleeps around and even comes close to infecting himself, while on the other he spearheads a deeply censorious campaign to eradicate hotels doubling as 'maisons closes'. Téchiné presents these contradictions without comment, including from the characters themselves, with the result that as often in his films one feels more like a sociologist observing the enaction of an experiment than a traditional viewer rooting for one character or another. He combines a highly mobile camera with the anamorphic aspect ratio to at times impressive effect, and the performances are pitch perfect, but the script's grasp of geography (weekend jaunts from Paris to the Midi) and realism (a child placed in a child car seat but not strapped in, turkey escalopes served barely fried and only on one side) is distractingly vague.
(The Witnesses)
Country: FR
Technical: col/2.35:1 112m
Director: André Téchiné
Cast: Emmanuelle Béart, Michel Blanc, Sami Bouajila, Julie Depardieu, Johan Libéreau
Synopsis:
An unconventional couple have a baby: the father dotes on the child, the mother, a children's author, attempts to shut it out in order to work. Into their lives, via a gay doctor acquaintance, comes free-spirited Manu, who spurns the latter's advances and then embarks on a torrid affair with the father, a police lieutenant in charge of the vice squad clamping down on the area where Manu resides.
Review:
Once again Téchiné focuses on edgy material, in this case the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic during the mid 1980s and its effect on swinging French society of the time. Notable is the character of Mehdi, who on the one hand sleeps around and even comes close to infecting himself, while on the other he spearheads a deeply censorious campaign to eradicate hotels doubling as 'maisons closes'. Téchiné presents these contradictions without comment, including from the characters themselves, with the result that as often in his films one feels more like a sociologist observing the enaction of an experiment than a traditional viewer rooting for one character or another. He combines a highly mobile camera with the anamorphic aspect ratio to at times impressive effect, and the performances are pitch perfect, but the script's grasp of geography (weekend jaunts from Paris to the Midi) and realism (a child placed in a child car seat but not strapped in, turkey escalopes served barely fried and only on one side) is distractingly vague.
(The Witnesses)
Country: FR
Technical: col/2.35:1 112m
Director: André Téchiné
Cast: Emmanuelle Béart, Michel Blanc, Sami Bouajila, Julie Depardieu, Johan Libéreau
Synopsis:
An unconventional couple have a baby: the father dotes on the child, the mother, a children's author, attempts to shut it out in order to work. Into their lives, via a gay doctor acquaintance, comes free-spirited Manu, who spurns the latter's advances and then embarks on a torrid affair with the father, a police lieutenant in charge of the vice squad clamping down on the area where Manu resides.
Review:
Once again Téchiné focuses on edgy material, in this case the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic during the mid 1980s and its effect on swinging French society of the time. Notable is the character of Mehdi, who on the one hand sleeps around and even comes close to infecting himself, while on the other he spearheads a deeply censorious campaign to eradicate hotels doubling as 'maisons closes'. Téchiné presents these contradictions without comment, including from the characters themselves, with the result that as often in his films one feels more like a sociologist observing the enaction of an experiment than a traditional viewer rooting for one character or another. He combines a highly mobile camera with the anamorphic aspect ratio to at times impressive effect, and the performances are pitch perfect, but the script's grasp of geography (weekend jaunts from Paris to the Midi) and realism (a child placed in a child car seat but not strapped in, turkey escalopes served barely fried and only on one side) is distractingly vague.