Smartorhypo Highly Overrated But Still Good

Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Brennan Camacho Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

jcappy Can this failed, disjointed plot be saved? Is it is worth saving? I think so, but I am probably in the minority. I suggest that the pivotal relationship between Antoine Lavau (Depardieu) and Cecile (Deneuvre) be resuscitated. There's enough integrity in the film's early going to inspire a re-working of two protagonists. I think the trick is to avoid at all costs stereotyping, cynicism, canned emotions, and manipulative plot turns.First, Antoine is singular (original) and he must stay in character. He is not some freak of nature who needs a Hollywood re-cast. There are shy and introverted men who, often in their twenties, will experience a break-up, maybe from their first real love. A male of this mode, may weather the storm, but gradually his conviction grows that the initial lover was both rarer than what he imagined and possibly even irreplaceable. He may soon become convinced that he blew his one true chance at love. So his affective love gradually shifts back in her direction, displacing thoughts of a new relationship. He may resurrect her photos, be more cognizant of her life, adopt her preferences, and more rarely, prefer to live in more physical proximity to her.To one degree or another, such a man is under the influence of a romantic ideal. He needs to experience a sense of love, so he returns to the woman who compelled his passion. He realizes that while remarriage is a mere dream, her palpable presence gives pique to his life. He also understands that any obtrusion into her life would run counter to this new realization. It's not that she's an angel, but rather that love put on hold or bracketed never really stops.In "Changing Times," (a trite title) Antoine initially appears to be this identical romantic lover. He's very singular and the not in the least unconvincing. His face is compelling, as is the complexity of his thoughts, the certainty of his emotions. He elicits interest--there is something of us in him, something in him we can learn from, something perhaps instructive in his loneliness. We sense that if he is to actually meet with this woman of his, it will have to be by accident. I mean like why after thirty years of steady love would he suddenly thrust himself on a married woman? As to Cecile, she too belongs here as the kind of woman who might inspire such memory and lasting love. Although in many ways typically middle class, she projects an independence, a world-weary sophistication, and a realistic sense of her position in life. She hosts a radio show, exercise authority over others, and is self-directed. She is no dreamer, no romantic; she grasps what a cad her younger husband is and deals with him as it suits her. When she meets Antoine she unhesitatingly sets her boundaries, defuses his interest, and projects him as a detail in a busy life.The movie's premise works. But the unfolding fails. It's as if these grown-ups morph into adolescents. Antoine slithers out of character as if he's suddenly aware of maleness, and is amazed by it. He doesn't exactly stalk Cecile but his actions and words suggest that continuum. Now his mix of shy and bold seem like a sneaky maneuver, and he can't seem to get enough of himself. In a tete-a tete with Cecile's hunky husband, he admits to having many affairs, but of being only impersonally present in them. And as he takes on a more aggressive approach to this man's wife, his singular anonymous lover image is certainly tarnished. And thus it is that he resorts to direct confrontation, high drama, and on shy, naive guises to effectuate his tricks which serve both to ingratiate himself with Cecile and to insinuate himself into her life. And with the help of convenient plot accidents, his assumption of access to his ex-lover, is achieved in a manner hardly different than that of any other drippy dude.If his role is abandoned by Techine, so too is Cecile's autonomy. She becomes the personification of access. (There is no comedy here, not initially and not now.) When interrupted by a hapless Antoine during a radio broadcast, her rage is over the top--which in turn sets her up for an equally over the top contriteness. Which shatters her independence. And seems to rob her of her volition. Thus she becomes for Antoine a sex therapy operative--one that requires no desire, will, or suggestion on his part. And, of course, after his mud accident, Cecile is then cast as a kind of madonna nurse, and is returned to familial motherhood.So, thanks to Techine's cop out direction, and imagination breakdown, two original and interesting characters who promises much in the way of subtle drama, and character development, are sacrificed. The unknown becomes the known. Antoine becomes everyman, and Cecile is reduced to a mother and a mistress.

jotix100 Antoine Lavau, is a man that never forgot to love Cecile, even though a lot of time has passed since they last saw one another. In fact, Cecile, who has married a Moroccan physician, and has settled in Tangiers, is going through some difficult time herself. When Antoine asks to be sent to Tangiers for a big project, all he has in mind is to find Cecile again.Not everything goes well when Cecile and Antoine finally meet. It's almost impossible to reactivate a love affair after so many years, as Antoine keeps counting the days since he lost her. Cecile, who is working on a radio program, has found her marriage to Natan, is in shambles. To make matters worse, her bisexual son, Sami, arrives for vacation with his lover, Nadia, and her young son.Sami wants to resume his sexual liaison with a young local who he secretly lusts after. Nadia, on the other hand, an Arab, has adapted to the Western customs, whereas Aicha, her twin, is a modest woman who seems to observe her religion and who is only working at a minimum wage job in a fast food place.The film has an almost tragic end as Antoine suffers a grave accident and has to be hospitalized. Cecile has come to a decision and it will come as no surprise to the viewer: love conquers all! That is the message that Andre Techine wants to tell us. Working with the screen play by Laurent Guyot, he does what he can to make this film engrossing.Gerard Depardieu and Catherine Deneuve reunite, once again for this film. It shows clearly how time is cruel even to great beauties like Ms. Deneuve, who appears to be aging, but still has her great beauty to share with the audience. Mr. Depardieu, alas, although younger, appears not to have the same luck as his co-star. Gilbert Melki plays Cecile's husband, and Lubua Azabal plays the dual role of Nadia/Aicha.The film has some good moments, although this is not Mr. Techine's finest moment directing.

edhannibalsr Just to add to the Australian fan's comments -- what is not to like about Changing Times? It echoes Last Metro (last Catherine & Gerard hook-up for the really nostalgia friendly) and tells a romantic story (a bit far fetched but remember suspension of disbelief as ticket of admission?) in a highly contemporary yet grown-up and worldly-wise way -- the cinematography and editing of same is exciting, story-focused and only sags a little in the middle like many of us. Stars like these two, who are actors first, remind us what "star" is supposed to mean -- they disappear into their characters and make you care what happens to them. Younger cast also compelling. vive les french flicks!!

Mengedegna Téchiné once again at his not-quite-best is once again better than just about anything else going on in movies. The Tangiers in which the film is set is one of cranes and bulldozers and exurban office blocks and urban blight as work-in-progress. It could be any big, hyper-developing city anywhere, a point only emphasized by unglamourized shots of the spectacular bay and of the seashore, along which African migrants crowd in search of a lift to Spain. Yet it is also a place where sheikhs still cast out demons (at least on videotape, in a very sharp and funny sequence), and modern, Westernized executive assistants must try hard not to act too irritated or insulted when their foreign charges ask to learn how folks here cast spells. No one who can help it speaks Arabic. This is the Morocco Paul Bowles really lived in, not the one he wrote about. But in the gritty and astringently unsentimental world Téchiné always gives us, magic can and does happen, just as he has always been telling us it does – when, where and how we least expect it.Into all this he brings Depardieu and Deneuve, well into late middle age and pointedly showing it. The actress the French press still ritually calls the Most Beautiful Woman In The World allows herself to be shot dowdy and wrinkled, and Depardieu is a pathetic, clutsy, mastodontic wreck of a project engineer who's supposed to build things but who pulls them down around himself instead. Viewers who come to this film hoping for a glamorous "Last Metro" sequel will (deservedly) be sorely disappointed, but it is in the interaction of these two as truthfully aging (but only partly matured and not necessarily wiser) human beings that much of the real magic of the film lies. The sequence of their first encounter is transcendental cinema: Téchiné paces, lights and,above all, frames it with as much mastery as you will see in any non-Asian film this year, and the actors pour their lifetimes of experience into making it a moment of stunning, deeply affecting comic understatement. With such consummate virtuosos in front of and behind the camera, all you can do is purr.Balzac here meets the Thousand and One Nights, with sudden clashes of culture and of personality, and with acute, squirm-inducingly true mixes of love and its opposite between friends, lovers, spouses and (in bravura double casting of Lubna Azabal) twins, all real and raw, all in quicksilver sequences with minimum exposition or narrative explication. The film looks as if it may have been done on a very tight schedule: some of sequences show signs of over-hasty rehearsal, of cameras rolling before actors have gelled and mastered their scene.But Téchiné is nonetheless a master who makes so many films that he is taken for granted and mistaken for a reliable journeyman. He probably longs for a breakthrough hit and may have been hoping for this finally to be the one. It won't be: the French press comment has ranged from very enthusiastic to tepid to dismissive, and, as is so often the case, he is up against newer and glitzier directors with films being released at roughly the same time. (In 1991, for example, it had been Olivier Assayas's "Paris s'éveille", portentous and affected, that had eclipsed Téchiné's searing but, as usual, flawed "J'embrasse pas"; this year, it is Arnaud Desplechin's "Rois et reine", also featuring Deneuve, that will doubtless outglitz "Les temps qui changent", without bettering it.) But in Paris, chic will always win over substance, and Téchiné will never be chic. This doubtless goes a long way to explaining why so many actors of the first rank (Deneuve – long a synonym for chic – among them) do some of their best work for him and come back to him time after time. They know something about Téchiné that too many professional critics don't -- and so, by now, should we.