BERLIN -- In "Changing Times", veteran director Andre Techine takes the power of love and subjects it to the greatest possible stress -- that of passing time.
With a fine ensemble cast, including those stalwarts of French cinema, Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu, and a fascinating setting in Tangiers, a city where change and time have proved a mixed blessing, Techine pulls together a multi-layered drama that sharply contrasts the idealistic with more realistic aspects of love.
Techine's films invariably find their way into international distribution, propelled by festival exposure and critical acclaim. "Changing Time" will follow that path.
Antoine (Depardieu) is a hard working and successful executive largely estranged from life. Thirty years before, when the love of his life left, he embraced loneliness as a state in which he can remain close to his beloved by dreaming of her. He comes to the Tax Free Zone of Tangiers to oversee construction of an audiovisual center. His secret mission though is to look up his long-lost love, Cecile (Deneuve), and offer her the gift of a love that time has only enlarged.
But Cecile has all but forgotten about Antoine. While she will in the course of the movie acknowledge that he too was the love of her life, she is more than distracted by her marriage to Nathan (Gilbert Melki), a doctor younger than herself, and their son Sami Malik Zidi), newly arrived from Paris and unexpectedly accompanied by his Moroccan girlfriend Nadia (Lubna Azabal) and her young son.
The strain of these surprise houseguests reveals cracks in her marriage, just as Tangiers rekindles old passions for Sami and Nadia. For Sami, it is his homosexuality and his deep attraction to Bilal (Nadem Rachati). For Nadia, it is her unfortunate passion for tranquilizers in a life lived apart from a twin sister, who refuses to see her.
The abrupt reappearance of Antoine -- made all the more dramatic by his accidentally running into a glass door and requiring the attention of Cecile's physician husband -- throws Cecile for a loop. She would prefer the past to remain there and not pop up in the present. The ideal, the mad passion these two once shared, should not compete with a love and marriage of some 20 years, where much of the passion has drained away.
Each character struggles with the past and loss of a romantic ideal. Only Antoine remains "pure" but at what cost? Which is worse: the loss of an ideal or the loss of one's life by clinging to that ideal?
The script by Laurent Guyot and Pascal Bonitzer exposes all the characters' human flaws of indecision, betrayal and self-abuse. No one is on the same page. Everyone has wounds he tries to conceal.
The movie's epiphany is caused by a kind of authorial intervention in which one character suffers an unlikely accident. This moves the movie uncomfortably closer to fable and makes for a pat ending that few are likely to swallow. The filmmakers' own romanticism may have gotten the better of them.
Tangiers makes a great locale for this story as that North African metropolis is feeling the pangs and joys of modernization. The audiovisual center may be another sign of prosperity, yet it clearly is being built on unstable ground and the project itself is running far behind schedule. The twins on divergent paths make a perfect metaphor for schizophrenia of its citizens, a self divided between the old Muslim ideals and the new soulless technocracy. Thus, production design, story and the actors conspire to present us with a provocative meditation on what changing times can do to relationships, cultures, cities and love itself.
CHANGING TIMES
A Gemini Films, France 2 Cinema co-production
Credits: Director: Andre Techine; Writers: Laurent Guyot, Pascal Bonitzer; Producer: Paulo Branco; Director of photography: Julien Hirsch; Production designer: Ze Branco; Music: Juliette Garrigues; Costumes: Christian Gasc, Catherine Leterrier; Editor: Martine Giordano.
Cast: Cecille: Catherine Deneuve; Antoine: Gerard Depardieu; Nathan: Gilbert Melki; Nadia/Aicha: Lubna Azabal; Sami: Malik Zidi; Said: Jabir Elomri; Nabila: Nabila Baraka; Bilal: Nadem Rachati.
No MPAA rating, running time 98 minutes.
With a fine ensemble cast, including those stalwarts of French cinema, Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu, and a fascinating setting in Tangiers, a city where change and time have proved a mixed blessing, Techine pulls together a multi-layered drama that sharply contrasts the idealistic with more realistic aspects of love.
Techine's films invariably find their way into international distribution, propelled by festival exposure and critical acclaim. "Changing Time" will follow that path.
Antoine (Depardieu) is a hard working and successful executive largely estranged from life. Thirty years before, when the love of his life left, he embraced loneliness as a state in which he can remain close to his beloved by dreaming of her. He comes to the Tax Free Zone of Tangiers to oversee construction of an audiovisual center. His secret mission though is to look up his long-lost love, Cecile (Deneuve), and offer her the gift of a love that time has only enlarged.
But Cecile has all but forgotten about Antoine. While she will in the course of the movie acknowledge that he too was the love of her life, she is more than distracted by her marriage to Nathan (Gilbert Melki), a doctor younger than herself, and their son Sami Malik Zidi), newly arrived from Paris and unexpectedly accompanied by his Moroccan girlfriend Nadia (Lubna Azabal) and her young son.
The strain of these surprise houseguests reveals cracks in her marriage, just as Tangiers rekindles old passions for Sami and Nadia. For Sami, it is his homosexuality and his deep attraction to Bilal (Nadem Rachati). For Nadia, it is her unfortunate passion for tranquilizers in a life lived apart from a twin sister, who refuses to see her.
The abrupt reappearance of Antoine -- made all the more dramatic by his accidentally running into a glass door and requiring the attention of Cecile's physician husband -- throws Cecile for a loop. She would prefer the past to remain there and not pop up in the present. The ideal, the mad passion these two once shared, should not compete with a love and marriage of some 20 years, where much of the passion has drained away.
Each character struggles with the past and loss of a romantic ideal. Only Antoine remains "pure" but at what cost? Which is worse: the loss of an ideal or the loss of one's life by clinging to that ideal?
The script by Laurent Guyot and Pascal Bonitzer exposes all the characters' human flaws of indecision, betrayal and self-abuse. No one is on the same page. Everyone has wounds he tries to conceal.
The movie's epiphany is caused by a kind of authorial intervention in which one character suffers an unlikely accident. This moves the movie uncomfortably closer to fable and makes for a pat ending that few are likely to swallow. The filmmakers' own romanticism may have gotten the better of them.
Tangiers makes a great locale for this story as that North African metropolis is feeling the pangs and joys of modernization. The audiovisual center may be another sign of prosperity, yet it clearly is being built on unstable ground and the project itself is running far behind schedule. The twins on divergent paths make a perfect metaphor for schizophrenia of its citizens, a self divided between the old Muslim ideals and the new soulless technocracy. Thus, production design, story and the actors conspire to present us with a provocative meditation on what changing times can do to relationships, cultures, cities and love itself.
CHANGING TIMES
A Gemini Films, France 2 Cinema co-production
Credits: Director: Andre Techine; Writers: Laurent Guyot, Pascal Bonitzer; Producer: Paulo Branco; Director of photography: Julien Hirsch; Production designer: Ze Branco; Music: Juliette Garrigues; Costumes: Christian Gasc, Catherine Leterrier; Editor: Martine Giordano.
Cast: Cecille: Catherine Deneuve; Antoine: Gerard Depardieu; Nathan: Gilbert Melki; Nadia/Aicha: Lubna Azabal; Sami: Malik Zidi; Said: Jabir Elomri; Nabila: Nabila Baraka; Bilal: Nadem Rachati.
No MPAA rating, running time 98 minutes.
- 2/14/2005
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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