The Cannes Film Festival has unveiled the program of its Cinema de la Plage section which launched last year with a mix of restored classics, cult films and premieres.
Open to all audiences, the Cinema de la Plage will take place on the beach every evening and will be free of charge. The program, which runs alongside the Official Selection, will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather,” the 40th anniversary of Steven Spielberg’s “E.T.,” as well as Peter Weir’s “The Truman Show” with Jim Carrey.
“Save Our School,” a socially-minded and timely comedy directed by Carine May and Hakim Zouhani, will have its world premiere as part of Cinema de La Plage. The screening will be attended by the filmmakers and cast members Anaïde Rozam, Sérigne M’Baye, Gilbert Melki, Sébastien Chassagne and Mourad Boudaoud.
Other movies on the Cinema de la Plage...
Open to all audiences, the Cinema de la Plage will take place on the beach every evening and will be free of charge. The program, which runs alongside the Official Selection, will celebrate the 50th anniversary of Francis Ford Coppola’s “The Godfather,” the 40th anniversary of Steven Spielberg’s “E.T.,” as well as Peter Weir’s “The Truman Show” with Jim Carrey.
“Save Our School,” a socially-minded and timely comedy directed by Carine May and Hakim Zouhani, will have its world premiere as part of Cinema de La Plage. The screening will be attended by the filmmakers and cast members Anaïde Rozam, Sérigne M’Baye, Gilbert Melki, Sébastien Chassagne and Mourad Boudaoud.
Other movies on the Cinema de la Plage...
- 5/10/2022
- by Elsa Keslassy
- Variety Film + TV
Seville International said Tuesday it will sell international rights at the upcoming American Film Market to Advantages of Traveling by Train, the upcoming Spanish comedic horror pic being directed by Aritz Moreno and written by Javier Gullón (Enemy). Production is set to start in December with a cast that includes Luis Tosar, Ernesto Alterio, Pilar Castro, Belén Cuesta, Ingrid García Jonsson, Javier Botet and Gilbert Melki. The plot centers on Helga, an editor and train traveler whose seatmate, a psychiatrist and an expert in personality dysfunctions, recounts to her the worst case he’s faced: the sordid and crazy tale of an extremely dangerous paranoid man obsessed with garbage. The story leads Helga down an unpredictable path as she sets out on an investigation following her encounter. Morena Films’ Merry Colomer and Juan Gordon are producers with Sr & Sra’s Leire Apellaniz and Logical Pictures’ Frédéric Fiore.
Myriad Pictures has...
Myriad Pictures has...
- 10/24/2018
- by Patrick Hipes
- Deadline Film + TV
Spanish shorts director Aritz Moreno makes feature debut on mystery.
Seville International is launching sales at the Afm next week on the Spanish-language film Advantages Of Traveling By Train.
Morena Films is producing the feature and is ramping up for a production start in December and will shoot mostly in San Sebastián, Spain, with select scenes being shot in Paris, France.
Award-winning shorts director Aritz Moreno makes his feature directorial debut from a screenplay by Enemy screenwriter Javier Gullón based on the novel by Antonio Orejudo. Advantages Of Traveling By Train follows a young editor who takes her seat on...
Seville International is launching sales at the Afm next week on the Spanish-language film Advantages Of Traveling By Train.
Morena Films is producing the feature and is ramping up for a production start in December and will shoot mostly in San Sebastián, Spain, with select scenes being shot in Paris, France.
Award-winning shorts director Aritz Moreno makes his feature directorial debut from a screenplay by Enemy screenwriter Javier Gullón based on the novel by Antonio Orejudo. Advantages Of Traveling By Train follows a young editor who takes her seat on...
- 10/24/2018
- by Jeremy Kay
- ScreenDaily
Catalina Denis cast in Paul Walker thriller Model and film actress Catalina Denis has been cast as the female lead opposite Paul Walker (Fast & Furious 6) and David Belle (Malavita) in Camille Delamarre’s Brick Mansions. The action thriller is EuropaCorp and Relativity Media’s English-language remake of the 2004 French-made action / thriller District B13. In Brick Mansions, Paul Walker incarnates an undercover cop out to defuse a bomb in possession of drug warlord RZA. Catalina Denis will play David Belle’s romantic interest. Luc Besson, who specializes in run-of-the-mill, Hollywood-style French-made action thrillers, is one of the film’s producers. Directed by Pierre Morel (Taken, From Paris with Love), and co-written by Luc Besson and Bibi Naceri, District B13 / Banlieue 13 stars David Belle, Cyril Raffaelli, Dany Verissimo-Petit, and co-screenwriter Naceri. The film performed modestly at the French box office; according to Box Office Mojo, District B13 was no. 51 on France’s 2004 box-office chart,...
- 5/15/2013
- by Zac Gille
- Alt Film Guide
Rating: 2.5/5.0
Chicago – From what I understand, the name Largo Winch is a household one in Europe. While it may mean nothing here, a French spy thriller with a name like “The Heir Apparent: Largo Winch,” based on a European comic book, might sound like the perfect alternative for arthouse movie goers looking for something different this holiday weekend. Sadly, from the very beginning, “Largo Winch” feels like nothing different at all. It’s surprisingly generic, clichéd, and often dull, with only a few set pieces and dashes of French style to separate it. Far from a complete disaster, but forgettable in nearly every way.
“The Heir Apparent” opens as a number of thrillers have – with the death of a very rich man. One minute, Mr. Nerio Winch (Miki Manojlovic) is lounging in his bathrobe on a boat, the next he’s being pulled underwater and drowned by a silent assassin.
Chicago – From what I understand, the name Largo Winch is a household one in Europe. While it may mean nothing here, a French spy thriller with a name like “The Heir Apparent: Largo Winch,” based on a European comic book, might sound like the perfect alternative for arthouse movie goers looking for something different this holiday weekend. Sadly, from the very beginning, “Largo Winch” feels like nothing different at all. It’s surprisingly generic, clichéd, and often dull, with only a few set pieces and dashes of French style to separate it. Far from a complete disaster, but forgettable in nearly every way.
“The Heir Apparent” opens as a number of thrillers have – with the death of a very rich man. One minute, Mr. Nerio Winch (Miki Manojlovic) is lounging in his bathrobe on a boat, the next he’s being pulled underwater and drowned by a silent assassin.
- 11/23/2011
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
Ed Helms ("The Hangover," "Cedar Rapids") has signed on to star in an American remake of French comedy "Le Mac" at Media Rights Capital and Red Hour Films says The Press Association.
José Garcia, Gilbert Melki and Carmen Maura starred in the original as a timid banker who is forced to assume the identity of his long-lost brother, a gangster and pimp.
Johnny Rosenthal ("Bad Santa 2") will pen the screenplay for the remake which Ben Stiller, Stuart Cornfeld and Guy Stodel will produce. No director is attached as yet.
José Garcia, Gilbert Melki and Carmen Maura starred in the original as a timid banker who is forced to assume the identity of his long-lost brother, a gangster and pimp.
Johnny Rosenthal ("Bad Santa 2") will pen the screenplay for the remake which Ben Stiller, Stuart Cornfeld and Guy Stodel will produce. No director is attached as yet.
- 9/2/2011
- by Garth Franklin
- Dark Horizons
Locarno, Switzerland -- The world premiere of "L'Avvocat" (The Counsel), a thriller written and directed by France's Cedric Anger, was the highlight Monday at the Locarno Film Festival, where it screened in a packed Piazza Grande on a day dedicated to French film.
The film tells the story of a young, ambitious attorney, played by Benoit Magimel, who unwittingly gets involved in the affairs of a mob boss, played by Gilbert Melki. Magimel, Melki and Anger were all on hand for the screening, where they charmed the crowd before hand.
In his comments before the film, Locarno artistic director Olivier Pere also broke sad news to the crowd, announcing that French actor Bruno Cremer had died the previous day at the age of 80.
The day's events also included a roundtable on French film and an invitation-only party to celebrate French film at Locarno's lakeside Lido.
The day's activities follow an...
The film tells the story of a young, ambitious attorney, played by Benoit Magimel, who unwittingly gets involved in the affairs of a mob boss, played by Gilbert Melki. Magimel, Melki and Anger were all on hand for the screening, where they charmed the crowd before hand.
In his comments before the film, Locarno artistic director Olivier Pere also broke sad news to the crowd, announcing that French actor Bruno Cremer had died the previous day at the age of 80.
The day's events also included a roundtable on French film and an invitation-only party to celebrate French film at Locarno's lakeside Lido.
The day's activities follow an...
- 8/9/2010
- by By Eric J. Lyman
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Guess what? Hollywood doesn't own the monopoly for cinematographic adaptations of comic books. In fact, Largo Winch, a French film adapted from a comic book penned by Jean Van Hamme and drawn by Philippe Francq, came out in France in 2008. Now, depending of where you live in Canada (preferably in Quebec?), the film will hit theatres on January 15, 2010.
Synopsis:
Nerio Winch (Miki Manojlovic), a billionaire, is found drowned. His death seems suspect given that he's the founder and the majority shareholder of the W Group, an economic empire. Although the other shareholders haven't got wind of any inheritors designated by Nerio, he has a secret: he has a son, Largo (Tomer Sisley), who was taken from an Eastern European orphanage. However, despite being innocent, Largo is thrown in a jail located in the Amazonian jungle for drug trafficking. Therefore comes this question: do the assassination of Nerio Winch and the...
Synopsis:
Nerio Winch (Miki Manojlovic), a billionaire, is found drowned. His death seems suspect given that he's the founder and the majority shareholder of the W Group, an economic empire. Although the other shareholders haven't got wind of any inheritors designated by Nerio, he has a secret: he has a son, Largo (Tomer Sisley), who was taken from an Eastern European orphanage. However, despite being innocent, Largo is thrown in a jail located in the Amazonian jungle for drug trafficking. Therefore comes this question: do the assassination of Nerio Winch and the...
- 12/14/2009
- by anhkhoido@hotmail.com (Anh Khoi Do)
- The Cultural Post
A film festival isn't just a way to see movies; it is, inevitably, a film festival. If you show a hundred or so features, even if they're picked at random, they will seem to form patterns, echo one another, one-up each other in certain respects to even a casual viewer. What was a single movie one day might, the next day, appear the superior or inferior version of another. That, maybe even more than the opportunity to see films, might be the heart of festival-going. It's like the appeal of city life; the great thing about cities isn't how much you can find in them, but how much happens in going from one desitination to the next. One inevitably compares. So while on Saturday, Frederic Mermoud's Partners, which intercut a Gilbert Melki / Emmanuelle Devos policier in gray and brown with a mild case of l'amour fou in red and gold,...
- 10/15/2009
- MUBI
I’ve been hearing rumblings about the upcoming film adaptation of Belgian comic series Largo Winch for a good while now, those in the know all convinced that this could be one of the big titles of the coming year. And based on the freshly released trailer I must say that I’m inclined to agree.
Based on the comics by Phillippe Franck and Jean Van Hamme the story revolves around a young man, adopted by a hugely wealthy businessman as a child. When his adoptive father is murdered the adopted boy - Largo, now a grown man - must take action to discover his father’s killers and protect his estate. As envisioned by director Jerome Salle this is slick and stylish action-adventure stuff, hyper stylized action on the same international scale as the Bond films but with the rough edges of the current incarnation buffed off. And did I say international?...
Based on the comics by Phillippe Franck and Jean Van Hamme the story revolves around a young man, adopted by a hugely wealthy businessman as a child. When his adoptive father is murdered the adopted boy - Largo, now a grown man - must take action to discover his father’s killers and protect his estate. As envisioned by director Jerome Salle this is slick and stylish action-adventure stuff, hyper stylized action on the same international scale as the Bond films but with the rough edges of the current incarnation buffed off. And did I say international?...
- 10/24/2008
- by Todd Brown
- Screen Anarchy
PARIS -- The title of this modestly pitched but engrossing psychological thriller is a reference to the famous "Case of Anna O", a key event in Freud's development of the theory of hysteria. To be sure, writer-director Michel Spinosa's protagonist clearly is a troubled young woman.
Although punctuated with chapter headings as in a textbook, such as "Hope", "Frustration" and "Hatred", and clearly based on clinical research, the movie is atmospheric, disturbing and blessed with an outstanding performance by Isabelle Carre in the title role.
The latter-day Anna, 30, lives with her mother (Genevieve Mnich) and works as a restorer of ancient books in France's National Library. She is plain and reserved and does not appear to have much of a social life. That all is not well with her becomes evident when she faints on her way out of the library and a little later deliberately steps into traffic.
Hospitalized with a broken arm, she fixates on the tall, handsome doctor, Zanevsky (Gilbert Melki), who is treating her. Soon she is stalking him, phoning his home and demanding that he meet her for a drink.
Anna is suffering from erotomania, a condition defined as a profound conviction that one is loved by someone who in fact is totally indifferent. She deploys immense energy and resourcefulness in pursuit of her fantasy, brazenly visiting Zanevsky's wife (Anne Consigny) in the art gallery where she works, stealing his mail and ramming his car with a van that she has stolen from Albert (Francis Renaud), the railway security guard she had earlier picked up and seduced in a fit of pique.
Things take a sinister turn when Anna, seeking further opportunities for harassment, gets herself taken on as a baby sitter for the occupant (Eric Savin) of the flat above Zanevsky's. She brutalizes her two young charges, then succeeds in gaining entry to Zanevsky's flat where -- the doctor and his wife being absent, preparing to move out -- she defiles the marital bed.
The movie owes more to Roman Polanski's "Repulsion" than to Adrian Lyne's "Fatal Attraction", and Anna finds salvation of a kind through the intervention of Eleonore (Gaelle Bona), her colleague and friend from the library, who settles her in a mountain retreat where she is able to bring up the child she conceived with Albert.
Shooting largely at night and in interiors, Spinosa lends his film a claustrophobic, sometimes hallucinatory quality, convincingly creating a world in which fantasies become capable of realization. Religious references suggest a parallel between erotomania and mystic vision -- a sudden illumination, the sense of having been chosen, the seeing of signs. Inessential details are withheld; we never learn Anna's surname, or the names of her mother, Zanevsky's wife or the upstairs neighbor.
The film is dominated by Carre. The actress inhabits her role, credibly mapping out Anna's transition from a drab, humdrum existence into full-blown psychosis. Apart from Zanevsky and Anna's mother, the other characters are largely secondary, but there are excellent cameos from Consigny, Savin and Francois Loriquet as Anna's psychiatrist.
Perfectionists may find a degree of implausibility in the success of Anna's stratagems, not to mention Zanevsky's failure to recognize her condition and the weakness of his efforts to deal with it. The origins of Anna's psychosis and the precise nature of her relationship with her mother remain obscure. Nonetheless, "Anna M". is a serious-minded piece of adult filmmaking about a little-known but surprisingly common phenomenon.
ANNA M.
Diaphana Films (France)
Ex Nihilo
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Michel Spinosa
Producer: Patrick Sobelman
Director of photography: Alain Duplantier
Production designer: Thierry Francois
Costumes: Nathalie Raoul
Editor: Chantal Hymans
Cast:
Anna M.: Isabelle Carre
Andre Zanevsky: Gilbert Melki
Mme. Zanevsky: Anne Consigny
Anna's Mother: Genevieve Mnich
Eleonore: Gaelle Bona
Albert: Francis Renaud
Upstairs Neighbor: Eric Savin
Receptionist: Samir Guesmi
Psychiatrist: Francois Loriquet
Running time -- 106 minutes
No MPAA rating...
Although punctuated with chapter headings as in a textbook, such as "Hope", "Frustration" and "Hatred", and clearly based on clinical research, the movie is atmospheric, disturbing and blessed with an outstanding performance by Isabelle Carre in the title role.
The latter-day Anna, 30, lives with her mother (Genevieve Mnich) and works as a restorer of ancient books in France's National Library. She is plain and reserved and does not appear to have much of a social life. That all is not well with her becomes evident when she faints on her way out of the library and a little later deliberately steps into traffic.
Hospitalized with a broken arm, she fixates on the tall, handsome doctor, Zanevsky (Gilbert Melki), who is treating her. Soon she is stalking him, phoning his home and demanding that he meet her for a drink.
Anna is suffering from erotomania, a condition defined as a profound conviction that one is loved by someone who in fact is totally indifferent. She deploys immense energy and resourcefulness in pursuit of her fantasy, brazenly visiting Zanevsky's wife (Anne Consigny) in the art gallery where she works, stealing his mail and ramming his car with a van that she has stolen from Albert (Francis Renaud), the railway security guard she had earlier picked up and seduced in a fit of pique.
Things take a sinister turn when Anna, seeking further opportunities for harassment, gets herself taken on as a baby sitter for the occupant (Eric Savin) of the flat above Zanevsky's. She brutalizes her two young charges, then succeeds in gaining entry to Zanevsky's flat where -- the doctor and his wife being absent, preparing to move out -- she defiles the marital bed.
The movie owes more to Roman Polanski's "Repulsion" than to Adrian Lyne's "Fatal Attraction", and Anna finds salvation of a kind through the intervention of Eleonore (Gaelle Bona), her colleague and friend from the library, who settles her in a mountain retreat where she is able to bring up the child she conceived with Albert.
Shooting largely at night and in interiors, Spinosa lends his film a claustrophobic, sometimes hallucinatory quality, convincingly creating a world in which fantasies become capable of realization. Religious references suggest a parallel between erotomania and mystic vision -- a sudden illumination, the sense of having been chosen, the seeing of signs. Inessential details are withheld; we never learn Anna's surname, or the names of her mother, Zanevsky's wife or the upstairs neighbor.
The film is dominated by Carre. The actress inhabits her role, credibly mapping out Anna's transition from a drab, humdrum existence into full-blown psychosis. Apart from Zanevsky and Anna's mother, the other characters are largely secondary, but there are excellent cameos from Consigny, Savin and Francois Loriquet as Anna's psychiatrist.
Perfectionists may find a degree of implausibility in the success of Anna's stratagems, not to mention Zanevsky's failure to recognize her condition and the weakness of his efforts to deal with it. The origins of Anna's psychosis and the precise nature of her relationship with her mother remain obscure. Nonetheless, "Anna M". is a serious-minded piece of adult filmmaking about a little-known but surprisingly common phenomenon.
ANNA M.
Diaphana Films (France)
Ex Nihilo
Credits:
Screenwriter-director: Michel Spinosa
Producer: Patrick Sobelman
Director of photography: Alain Duplantier
Production designer: Thierry Francois
Costumes: Nathalie Raoul
Editor: Chantal Hymans
Cast:
Anna M.: Isabelle Carre
Andre Zanevsky: Gilbert Melki
Mme. Zanevsky: Anne Consigny
Anna's Mother: Genevieve Mnich
Eleonore: Gaelle Bona
Albert: Francis Renaud
Upstairs Neighbor: Eric Savin
Receptionist: Samir Guesmi
Psychiatrist: Francois Loriquet
Running time -- 106 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 4/16/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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
BERLIN -- Gerard Depardieu and Catherine Deneuve are set to topline Les Temps Qui Change (Changing Times), a drama directed by Andre Techine that Gemini Films will begin selling at the upcoming American Film Market, Gemini chief Paolo Branco said Sunday at the Berlin International Film Festival. Depardieu will play a man who sets out to win back his first love some 30 years after their romance ended. His quest takes him from France to the Moroccan city of Tangiers, but he discovers that his former lover has changed more than he anticipated. The film co-stars Gilbert Melki. Shooting on the 6 million ($7.6 million) picture is scheduled to start April 15 in Tangiers. Depardieu and Deneuve have previously starred in several films together, notably Francois Truffaut's 1980 The Last Metro.
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