An engaging drama with superb performances, but it's slightly let down by an anti-climactic ending.
10/19/07 03:15 AM
The Witnesses (2008)
85 %
Reviews Counted: 34 Fresh: 29 Rotten:5 Average Rating: 6.9/10
Runtime: 1 hr 52 mins
Synopsis:
Legendary French film director André Téchiné goes back to 1980s Paris in the tender, heartbreaking THE WITNESSES. Emmanuelle Beart (8 WOMEN) stars as Sarah, a children's book author who has just had her first child with husband Mehdi (Sami Bouajila), a vice cop. Sarah's doctor and close... [More]
Genre: Foreign Films
Starring: Michel Blanc, Emmanuelle Beart, Sami Bouajila, Julie Depardieu, Johan Libereau
Director: André Téchiné
Screenwriter: André Téchiné, Laurent Guyot, Viviane Zingg
Producer: Saďd Ben Saďd
Composer: Philippe Sarde
Screenwriter: André Téchiné, Laurent Guyot, Viviane Zingg
Producer: Saďd Ben Saďd
Composer: Philippe Sarde
Reviews
Téchiné captures the changing attitudes of the times but some characters feel too peripheral.
10/19/07 03:15 AM
Top Critic In Techine's nuance-sensitive Aids drama, the characters feel as real as they are multi-faceted - but they are rarely engaging.
10/12/07 04:06 AM
Top Critic Bristling with emotional intensity, this is far superior to earlier AIDS-related dramas such as the platitudinous Philadelphia.
10/09/07 03:15 AM
Top Critic The Witnesses doesn't pay off with a great operatic pinnacle, but it's better that way. Better to show people we care about facing facts they care desperately about, without the consolation of plot mechanics.
05/16/08 11:32 AM
Top Critic A rambling but often affecting account of the early days of the AIDS epidemic.
04/03/08 03:23 PM
Unyieldingly pleasant and way too fussy for its own good... so sunny and polite it makes Rent look like Cruising.
03/17/08 05:22 PM
It becomes a movie about figuring out how to live a full life, and The Witnesses is necessarily a bittersweet one, since so many people who came of age in the '80s never had a chance.
03/14/08 02:25 PM
Director Andre Techine's story is one of subtle emotional tones that require the most of an actor, and the cast is uniformly compelling.
03/13/08 05:30 PM
In The Witnesses, [director] Techine levels his gaze on the '80s, an era of seeming innocence, perhaps license, and one in which biological freedom has led to a loose, even sloppily knit fabric of humanity.
03/13/08 02:58 PM
André Téchiné is a master at taking life experiences and stripping them of sentimentality, leaving us with only the bare-bones honesty of relationships and desire.
03/03/08 12:11 AM
André Téchiné is a master at taking life experiences and stripping them of sentimentality, leaving us with only the bare-bones honesty of relationships and desire.
03/03/08 12:09 AM
What the characters in The Witnesses -- and the audience -- pay testimony to in André Téchiné's urgent, compassionate, and ultimately optimistic French drama are the toll the epidemic has rung, and the responsibility of the living to choose life.
02/20/08 04:36 PM
An ambling narrative, but an atmospheric one that feels authentic despite its unlikely character pairings.
02/15/08 11:40 AM
Top Critic It is a huge credit to the actors that we end up caring about these deeply flawed individuals.
02/14/08 12:42 AM
This film need not be approached with dread or trepidation; life, as witnessed by this small group of flawed but always empathetic characters, is a messy, ugly, and unfair business, but sometimes still surprisingly wonderful.
02/03/08 08:20 AM
This depiction of the onslaught of AIDS is curiously pragmatic and a little clunky, but then again, perhaps it is time we all got a refresher course in AIDS awareness and its terrible consequences.
02/01/08 01:34 PM
Some may think the metaphoric possibilities of an incurable illness that can be transmitted through sexual contact have been all but exhausted. Director André Téchiné almost proves otherwise in The Witnesses, a kind of film opera without music.
02/01/08 01:30 PM
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