Changing Times - the new André Techine

[Howard Schumann]

Seen at the VIFF

CHANGING TIMES (Les Temps Qui Changent)

Directed by André Techine (2005)

Nominated for the Golden Bear Award at the Berlin Film Festival, André Techine's Changing Times reunites French superstars Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu for the seventh time. Set in Tangiers, Morocco in the fifties, the film tackles large topics: temporary pleasure versus enduring commitment, the status of women in Morocco, bisexuality, and the economic gap between wealthy European nations and the third world, but none are fully developed. Along the way, we see refugees waiting by the sea hoping for voyage to Europe, Arabs slaughtering sheep in the desert, and women afraid to be seen in public with men. The film has a fragmentary quality and, in spite of some lyrical moments, is mainly a star vehicle that cannot decide whether it wants to be a comedy, a tragedy, or political commentary.

The film begins as a landslide buries Antoine Lavau (Gerard Depardieu), a supervisor inspecting a construction site, and the film proceeds with flashbacks to Antoine's arrival in Tangiers and his subsequent life in Morocco. Lavau has come to Tangiers to expedite the building of an audiovisual center in the Tax Free Zone of Tangiers. Perhaps sexpedite might be more to the point as he has basically come to rekindle a romance with Cecile (Deneueve), his first love with whom he is still obsessed, even though he has not tried to contact her during the last thirty years out of fear of rejection. Cecile is a radio announcer on a late night music and talk show. Antoine sends her flowers anonymously and spends his nights listening to her voice on the radio. In a scene played for laughs, he even watches a video about voodoo so he can render her powerless to resist his advances. When the two finally meet, it is only after Antoine runs into a glass wall breaking his nose.

Cecile has changed greatly since coming to North Africa and has neither fond memories of Antoine nor any wish to rekindle their romance. She is remarried to Natan (Gilbert Melki), a Jewish doctor and they have one son, Sami (Malik Zidi), a bisexual, who has been living in Paris with his Moroccan girl friend Nadia (Lubna Azubal) and her son Said (Idir Elomri). He is in Tangier visiting his family for the holidays and renewing acquaintances with his Moroccan lover Bilal (Idir Rachati) who lives in a country estate well protected by a pack of none too friendly dogs. Nadia, who suffers from emotional problems and takes tranquilizers, wants to visit her twin sister Aicha while in Tangiers whom she hasn't seen in six years but Aicha refuses to see her, telling Nadia that it would complicate her life. These episodes have some tender moments but we do not learn enough about either sister or for that matter Sami or Bilal to have any emotional investment in their lives.

As Cecile's relationship with Natan becomes more and more strained, she begins to open up a little bit to Antoine and starts to show some affection, but this is interrupted by Antoine's accident at the site, leading to a contrived and predictable resolution of the plot. Although Changing Times contains some fine performances by two outstanding professionals, little emotion is conveyed and I did not find the relationship to be truly convincing. The times they are-a changin' and if this film is any indication of the direction of André Techine's work, it is not for the better. Perhaps someone should have considered putting a voodoo spell on the scriptwriter. As it is, there is much good intention but little magic.

GRADE: B-

[Chris Knipp]

Thank you for this detailed discussion. I would like to be able to see it, but Téchiné has been uneven, and really hasn't done anything great since Les Voleurs (1996), in my opinion, though others would differ from me. In my opinion J'embrasse pas/I Don't KIss, Les Roseaux sauvages/Wild Reeds, Ma saison préferée, and Les voleurs are fine. I didn't like the earlier ones I've seen, and nor the ones after that.

[Howard Schumann]

Originally posted by Chris Knipp
Thank you for this detailed discussion. I would like to be able to see it, but Téchiné has been uneven, and really hasn't done anything great since Les Voleurs (1996), in my opinion, though others would differ from me. In my opinion J'embrasse pas/I Don't KIss, Les Roseaux sauvages/Wild Reeds, Ma saison préferée, and Les voleurs are fine. I didn't like the earlier ones I've seen, and nor the ones after that. The only other ones I've seen are Wild Reeds and Ma saison préferée which I liked very much (Wild Reeds especially). Didn't you give a good review for Strayed? or am I thinking about someone else?

[Chris Knipp]

How foolish I am to have forgotten Strayed (Les Egarés). Yes, you're absolutely right, I liked that too. My review of it:

http://www.chrisknipp.com/writing/viewtopic.php?t=321.

I would also very strongly recommend to you the complexly plotted, noirish Les Voleurs/The Thieves.

[Johann]

Nasty hacker destroyed your reviews?

Sounds like someone had to overcompensate for not having a dick.


And people get up in my grill for doom and gloom talk...

It's getting really gross indeed Chris.

Bush passes laws for gun makers, Rosa Parks dies while CNN tries to come across as "historic" news, we've passed the 2000th dead mark.


Good week My Fellow Americans!

[Chris Knipp]

Anyway I've got the reviews back up because there was backup, and I'm not going to waste my time thinking about this guy who did it or what he is lacking. I doubt he thinks about what he is doing himself or he would stop, and maybe some day he will. I had a hacker and a hacking cough, but now just the cough remains; the hacker's gone.

[Chris Knipp]

From list of Rendezvous with French Cinema:[quoted by arsaib4]:

Les Temps qui changent (Changing Times) directed by André Téchiné
There's an extraordinary sense of warmth to André Téchiné's lovely new film. The warmth comes not only from the powerful Moroccan sunlight that fills almost every scene, but also from the tremendous rapport between the director and his actors, whose performances are so open, at times so vulnerable, that they express levels of emotion rarely felt in movies. Nominated for the César for Best Promising Actor, Malik Zidi.--
From Howard Schumann -- the only review in English cited on IMDb:


(Excerpts:) The film has a fragmentary quality and, in spite of some lyrical moments, is mainly a star vehicle that cannot decide whether it wants to be a comedy, a tragedy, or political commentary. . .

Lavau has come to Tangiers to expedite the building of an audiovisual center in the Tax Free Zone of Tangiers. Perhaps sexpedite might be more to the point . . .
These episodes have some tender moments but we do not learn enough about either sister or for that matter Sami or Bilal to have any emotional investment in their lives. . .

Although Changing Times contains some fine performances by two outstanding professionals, little emotion is conveyed and I did not find the relationship to be truly convincing. The times they are-a changin' and if this film is any indication of the direction of André Techine's work, it is not for the better. Perhaps someone should have considered putting a voodoo spell on the scriptwriter… GRADE: B- Howard Schumann
COMMENT BY CHRIS KNIPP:

(In response to Howard Schumann)


Having finally watched the film on a DVD that I got in France -- without subtitles, even in French, so I've had some trouble following, but so that I've also stayed with the dialogue as one never does with subtitles in the way -- I find that some of what you've said is untrue, some is quite accurate, while other things are misleadingly stated out of a lack of sympathy. It's quite true that Téchiné has made some films that were not up to his best and this is arguably one of them; but it's still vintage Téchiné; I suggest you watch more of his films so you can see the interrelationships better. Téchiné makes complex films, and his working on different levels has sometimes been mistaken for being slapdash. But as someone on IMDb wisely said, Téchiné at less than his best is still better than most of the others.

Les temps qui changent may give the impression of being incomplete, its elements sketched in -- an impression furthered by the use of hand held camera (a feature that you partiularly dislike). You may not like Antoine (Gérard Depardieu). In an interview one of the actors (Gilbert Melki, who plays Natan, Cécile's Jewish pied noir doctor husband -- who you also may not like) has described Antoine as a child. Remaining single for thirty years dreaming of his lost love, he has existed in an arrested state of development -- a state paralleled later by his coma. When he comes to, and Cécile (Catherine Deneuve) is there, waiting for him, with Natan gone to Casa, his life may be ready to begin. It's easy to be impatient with such a person, especially when he's a big heavy fellow and a good bourgeois, a successful entrepreneurial architect/builder. If you can't sympathize, then you'll think he's an impractical dreamer, a fool, a clumsy stalker. But it one chooses to sympathize with him -- and with Téchiné that's what you've got to do with everybody; he doesn't have villains -- nothing could be more touching than Antoine's romantic mission, coming to Tangier to take Cécile back after thirty years of longing only for her.

There is no reason to think that the making of the film was rushed. Téchine is always working with many characters and levels, from the simple triangle (with three sexualities and three kinds of politics) in Wild Reeds to Les Voleurs' layered story with multiple chronologies, social levels, and narrators. One shouldn't think of Nadia/Aïsha (Lubna Azabal, a fine actress who may be seen currently in Paradise Now), or Sami (Malik Sidi, of Water Drops on Burning Rocks and another strong new young actor) and their intertwined relationships as sketchy. Rather one should think of the central characters' lives as deepened by the complexities introduced through Nadia, Sami, and the others. Though Téchiné's various films may be more or less ambitious technically, they all are ambitious in their emotional conception, and can show people living a whole life or a whole love in a single night, as happens in Égarés/Strayed (another underappreciated Téchiné film, particularly in France, where it was quickly passed over).

When Depardieu's and Deneuve's characters finally meet again in Tangiers after he's been peeking at her and in his confusion walks into a window, the moment is clumsy, but full of emotion; but if you aren't paying attention, or are watching without sufficient sympathy, it may seem simply clumsy, even a crude device. The thick glass represents the wall now existing between Depardieu and Deneuve's current life, just like the snarling dogs that greet Sami (Malik Zidi) every time he goes to visit his Moroccan former lover Bilal (Nadem Rachati), who has told him it's all different now they're not in Paris any more.

Eight years ago I wrote: "Téchiné's is a world of outsiders, of sexual ambiguity, of passionate confusion and of hanging on in a grim world because there's some hope of love." That's as true now as it was then.

Téchiné is an auteur, one of the notable French directors to come into his own over the past twenty years. He tries different things, but his themes recombine. It makes a big difference to have seen a substantial block of his work (I haven't seen all of it myself). When one thinks of the earlier films in terms of the new ones, they get better and better, even if they're not all masterpieces. Look at who he gets to work for him. He may have a weakness for these famous faces; but Deneuve has done some of her best work for him; and he has used (then) newcomers like Benoit Magimel and now Malik Zidi with equal skill. Les temps qui changent isn't a film that "cannot decide whether it wants to be a comedy, a tragedy, or political commentary. ." It's a romance, with a political context, and a sad side, and it has no trouble deciding; but this director works on many levels at once, even though his approach is understated.

P.s. I would also recommend J'embrasse pas/I Don't Kiss, which blew me away when I first saw it. But I think the key to his work is Les Voleurs/Thieves. I know you have liked other Téchiné films. I think when you reviewed Les temps qui changent you were not in a sympathetic mood. Think of that blurb, "There's an extraordinary sense of warmth to André Téchiné's lovely new film. The warmth comes not only from the powerful Moroccan sunlight that fills almost every scene, but also from the tremendous rapport between the director and his actors, whose performances are so open, at times so vulnerable, that they express levels of emotion rarely felt in movies." It's true. Look again and open up a bit more to Téchiné's way of working, and I think it'll look better. Maybe next time anyway. . .

To sum up, not Téchiné's best, but this has a lot of charm, and it is very Téchiné -- and that's a very good thing.

[Howard Schumann]

Glad you liked it. That's how I saw it.