Les témoins

Les Témoins (The Witnesses) is another fine artwork by French director André Téchiné that continues to examine relationships in times of stress and through areas of rough travel. As written by Téchiné, Laurent Guyot, and Viviane Zingg this film is a love story and a social commentary on life in 1984 when AIDS raised its ugly head and disrupted lives, hopes and relationships. What could have been a heavy-handed woeful tale is instead a story about ordinary people and how the spectre of the then 'new disease' affected a small group of friends. In the intimacy of the story there is an opportunity to reflect and to see more clearly the atmosphere of that time in history.

Sarah (Emmanuelle Béart) is a writer of children's books married to Mehdi (Sami Bouajila), a member of the Paris police force vice squad. They have an open marriage and have just given birth to a baby boy - a factor that disrupts their separate lives while conflicting their married life. Sarah has a physician friend Adrien (Michel Blanc, so memorable in his role in 'Monsieur Hire') who is gay, and while he is older, he still longs for the company of young men. Adrien meets the young catering student Manu (Johan Libéreau), a lad whose sexual appetite is satisfied by trysts in parks, back rooms of bars, etc. Manu and his opera singer sister Julie (Julie Depardieu) live modestly in a sleazy hotel cum brothel that is under surveillance by Mehdi. Adrien and Manu strike up a friendship and are invited to join Sarah and Mehdi to Sarah's mother's cabin by the sea and while there a relationship between Manu and Mehdi begins, one that will become an affair in secret.

A strange disease comes to public attention and it is Adrien who is in charge of the investigation of the disease now called AIDS. Though Adrien's ties with Manu have become platonic while Manu see Mehdi daily, Adrien is the first to notice lesions on Manu, lesions that are the hallmark of AIDS. How this discovery affects the lives of each of the characters we have met (the 'witnesses' to a very important time in our history) serves as the crux of the story - part tragedy and part a torch of resilience the weaves the story to a close in an honest, touching but never maudlin manner.

The acting is consistently excellent, the sort of ensemble acting that keeps the focus on the message of the film rather than on individual attention to characters. The movie is beautifully photographed by Julien Hirsch and the musical score by Philippe Sarde wisely blends excerpts from Vivaldi and Mozart with original music that recalls the 1980s. This is yet another triumph for André Téchiné - a film that deserves the widest possible audience. Grady Harp

This script is perfection. The directing is awesome. The actors are---every single one---sexy. The plot is surprising. The climax is heartbreaking. The depth of these stories is revelatory. The dialogue is witty. The characters are cherishable. The editing is astonishing. In summation, this brilliant film is revealing, true, brutal, funny. Sexy are the actors. Sad is the plot. True is the reflection of these lives in these times. Sexy are the actors. Sad is the story. True is the movie. Perfection is the movie. Bravo to all.

I don't get this minimum of 1,000 words. I loved this movie. I will say it again and again.

And it's sexy.

A somewhat schematic script - you can almost see the boxes being ticked as each issue is dealt with - does not ultimately detract from a fine achievement. The story surrounds the succumbing to HIV-AIDS by a life-loving young man at the time when the world was taken by surprise by the ferocity of the hitherto-unknown virus. The various reactions - bewilderment, fear, panic, hatred, self-loathing, guilt, determination, courage, loss, grief and, of course, love - are all charted in the five central characters.

There can be little argument, I'd have thought, concerning the excellence of Michel Blanc's performance; nor of the puzzling awfulness of Lorenzo Balducci's - whyever was this Italian actor cast as an American who had been brought up in Australia?

Julie Depardieu's character is the least developed of the central quintet but nevertheless the actress manages, as ever, to make a fully-rounded contribution.

Emanuelle Beart's striking features and dynamic screen presence make it difficult to assess her as an actress. In the end she didn't convince me she was any kind of writer, but she was entirely convincing as a mother with ambivalence to her baby. The scene where her character talks to her own mother (the late Maia Simon, in a brief but noteworthy final performance) about the difficulties surrounding her own birth is one of the most tender in the film.

Johan Libéreau is touching as the doomed Manu, fleshing out what seems to me to be a somewhat idealised character - unreflective but sensitive, foolhardy yet vulnerable.

But the film ultimately belongs to Sami Bouajila as the policeman who finds himself in the most unexpected of relationships. It's by far the most complex role and also, perhaps for that very reason, the most believable. Bouajila embraces the contradictions, possibly realising, as Heath Ledger proved so memorably in Brokeback Mountain, that struggles with sexuality can produce compelling drama.

Les Temoins is well edited, photographed and, on the whole, well directed. The influence of Truffaut's Jules Et Jim is all-pervading, but it's none the worse for that. The film's biggest advantage is that it tackles its subject in an entirely unsentimental way: the same script made in Hollywood would undoubtedly turn into something unspeakably gooey - the memory of Philadelphia, with which it could all too easily be compared, makes me shudder. Les Temoins is way, way above that.

I agree with some of these comments. By 1984 I thought we were more familiar with AIDS...maybe 82 is the year this should be set. My main gripe was the unconvincing make up Manu wears, and the way he doesn't lose weight. What was so shocking and devastating for those of us growing up with the onset of AIDS was running into people who were gorgeous, fit young and beautiful. Next time you saw them their faces were blemished, their bodies wasted, emaciated, skeletal like. I recall bareley recognising a young lad who'd once been a fixture on the scene. So the scenes where Manu is nursed through the terminal stages were less than convincing and left me somewhat unmoved. Otherwise its worth seeing and its sex positive, uplifting, life affirming attitude is a welcome riposte to Hollywoods schlocky treatment of the subject.

As an ash sea. Love and errors, ivory towers and theoretically escapes. Social chains and sandy expectations. A young man - axis of small society. A sentimental adventure, the sick and the good ways. A french novel about values and sentimental windows. Scarfs of past and future as Persian carpet. Emmanuelle Beart in skin of reed-character. A film about AIDS and decisions. About search of life sense and answers behind the words. Death as scrub. And the sound of things who makes measure of feelings. Fresco of a world, it is interesting for the art of director and for interesting cast. And, more that, for the final taste. For the traces of its parts - mirrors in fact.