''Changing Times'' (original title: ) is a 2004 French drama film directed by
André Téchiné
André Téchiné (; born 13 March 1943) is a French screenwriter and film director. He has a long and distinguished career that places him among the most accomplished post-French New Wave, New Wave French film directors.
Téchiné belongs to a s ...
, starring
Catherine Deneuve
Catherine Fabienne Dorléac (born 22 October 1943), known professionally as Catherine Deneuve (, , ), is a French actress. She is considered one of the greatest European actresses on film. In 2020, ''The New York Times'' ranked her as one of th ...
and
Gérard Depardieu
Gérard Xavier Marcel Depardieu (, , ; born 27 December 1948) is a French actor. An icon of French cinema, considered a world star in the same way as Alain Delon or Brigitte Bardot, he has completed over 250 films since 1967, most of which as ...
. The film follows a construction engineer who goes to Morocco to oversee a new project and catch up with the woman he loved 30 years ago.
[Marshall, ''André Téchiné'', p. 132]
Plot
Antoine, a successful French civil engineer, travels to
Tangiers
Tangier ( ; , , ) is a city in northwestern Morocco, on the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean. The city is the capital of the Tanger-Tetouan-Al Hoceima region, as well as the Tangier-Assilah Prefecture of Morocco.
Many c ...
to supervise the construction of buildings for a large media center. His real motivation, however, is to seek out his first love from thirty years before, Cécile. Having discovered that Cécile lives in Tangiers, he begins anonymously sending her roses every day at the radio station where she hosts a French-Arabic program, but she is uninterested in her secret admirer. Cécile, who married a man shortly after ending her relationship with Antoine, only to divorce later, is currently married to a younger man, Nathan, a Moroccan Jewish physician.
Antoine has literally counted the days (31 years, 8 months, and 20 days) since he last saw Cécile and has spent years tracking her down. He has come to Morocco expressly to make her fall back in love with him. He has never married and in his obsession to win Cécile's heart he recruits the help of Nabila, his Moroccan assistant, to investigate the possibility of using witchcraft. Antoine and Cécile eventually cross paths in a supermarket when Antoine walks into a plate glass window, injuring his nose, and Nathan, who is with Cécile, rushes over to administer first aid.
Around the time Antoine arrives in Tangier, Cécile and Nathan's son, Sami, who lives in Paris, arrives for a visit with his live-in girlfriend, Nadia, and Saïd, her 9-year-old son by another man. Sami often leaves them alone in order to visit with his Moroccan boyfriend Bilal, who briefly lived in Paris and is now looking after a villa for its absent owners. Bilal more or less accepts Sami's ambivalence and they restart their affair. Nadia, meanwhile, hopes to reconnect with her identical twin sister, Aïcha, a conservative observant Muslim who works in a McDonald's, but Aicha is reluctant to see her and after many efforts Nadia manages only a brief glimpse at her sister from afar. When Nadia's addiction to prescriptions pills is exposed by Nathan, Sami decides that is time to return to Paris.
Cécile, who is cold and formal, has buried her youthful dreams, coping with life in a state of mild exasperation. Her marriage is less than blissful. Nathan, whose career has stalled, has had several affairs. Eventually Cécile, encouraged by Rachel, a friend and coworker, accepts Antoine's advances, initially proposing a brief fling, rather than his preference for them to grow old together. They make love and Antoine is closer to reaching his goal just when he was losing all hope. However, shortly thereafter, Antoine is involved in a serious accident, trapped in a collapse at the construction site where he works and is hospitalized with a coma. Cécile visits him constantly at the hospital.
Cécile and Nathan separate. He moves to
Casablanca
Casablanca (, ) is the largest city in Morocco and the country's economic and business centre. Located on the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast of the Chaouia (Morocco), Chaouia plain in the central-western part of Morocco, the city has a populatio ...
accepting a new job. It is suggested that he has started a relationship with Aïcha. Bilal is ambivalent about accepting Samis's offer to visit him in Paris. Months later during one of Cécile's hospital visits, Antoine wakes up from his coma, and their hands join.
Cast
*
Catherine Deneuve
Catherine Fabienne Dorléac (born 22 October 1943), known professionally as Catherine Deneuve (, , ), is a French actress. She is considered one of the greatest European actresses on film. In 2020, ''The New York Times'' ranked her as one of th ...
as Cécile
*
Gérard Depardieu
Gérard Xavier Marcel Depardieu (, , ; born 27 December 1948) is a French actor. An icon of French cinema, considered a world star in the same way as Alain Delon or Brigitte Bardot, he has completed over 250 films since 1967, most of which as ...
as Antoine Lavau
*
Gilbert Melki
Gilbert Melki (; born 12 November 1958) is a French actor.
Life and career
Nephew of actor Claude Melki (''The Acrobat (film), The Acrobat''), Melki grew up in a Jewish family from Algeria. His father, an antiques dealer, came from Khenchela in ...
as Nathan
*
Malik Zidi as Sami
*
Lubna Azabal as Nadia/Aïcha
*
Nadem Rachati as Bilal
*
Tanya Lopert as Rachel
* Nabila Baraka as Nabila
* Idir Elomri as Saïd
Release
Though the film's initial release was in December 2004, its regular release in the United States was not until mid-July 2006, when it opened at the Paris Theatre in
Manhattan
Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
. The film was released on DVD in the United States on 3 October 2006.
Reception
The film garnered a favorable critical reaction, holding a fresh rating of 63% on
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review aggregator, review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee ...
based on 41 reviews.
Metacritic
Metacritic is an American website that aggregates reviews of films, television shows, music albums, video games, and formerly books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created ...
gave the film an average score of 64/100, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
The reviewer for the
Minneapolis Star Tribune
''The Minnesota Star Tribune'', formerly the ''Minneapolis Star Tribune'', is an American daily newspaper based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. As of 2023, it is Minnesota's largest newspaper and the seventh-largest in the United States by circula ...
commented that: " The movie is not quite in the league of his 1995 masterpiece, ''
Wild Reeds
''Wild Reeds'' () is a 1994 French drama film directed by André Téchiné about the sexual awakening of four teenagers and their subsequent sensitive passage into adulthood at the end of the Algerian War. The film was selected as the French entr ...
''. But it still serves as another gorgeous and immensely satisfying reminder that there are few better directors than Téchiné when it comes to capturing the vagaries of the heart. The script, which the director helped write, is over determined. But the casting is inspired. In many ways, the story is about the spells we allow ourselves to fall under, preventing us from seeing life as it is.
Andrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris (October 31, 1928 – June 20, 2012) was an American film critic. He was a leading proponent of the auteur theory of film criticism.
Early life
Sarris was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Greek immigrant parents, Themis (née Kat ...
from ''
The New York Observer
''The New York Observer'' was a weekly newspaper established in 1987. In 2016, it ceased print publication and became the online-only newspaper ''Observer''. The media site focuses on culture, real estate, media, politics and the entertainment ...
'' called it "an interesting film experience, as much because of its chaotic narrative as in spite of it.
In ''
Variety
Variety may refer to:
Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats
* Variety (radio)
* Variety show, in theater and television
Films
* ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont
* ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
'' Lisa Nesselson said that "this moody, more-bitter-than-sweet ode to anxiety is intense adult fare reinforced by effective no frills lensing".
Writing in
Newsday
''Newsday'' is a daily newspaper in the United States primarily serving Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island, although it is also sold throughout the New York metropolitan area. The slogan of the newspaper is "Newsday, Your Eye on LI" ...
, film critic John Anderson lauded the director. " Techiné always locates a steadfast emotional element in the worlds he creates, a defiant human construct against unstoppable change. In ''Changing Times'', it is love, in unfamiliar forms".
Stephen Holden
Stephen Holden (born July 18, 1941) is an American writer, poet, and music and film critic.
Biography
Holden earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Yale University in 1963. He worked as a photo editor, staff writer, and eventually be ...
in ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
'' wrote "In ''Changing Times'', Mr. Téchiné, the great French director, is near the peak of his form. Weaving a half dozen subplots, he creates a set of variations on the theme of divided sensibilities tugging one another into states of perpetual unrest and possible happiness. Much of the movie's charm lies in its sheer vitality. Mr. Téchiné loves people and life, and every scene is filled with light, music, activity and a sensuous appreciation of landscape. The characters are continually on the move. That's one reason Mr. Téchiné's films feel so buoyant: no one is weighed down by too much psychological baggage. He accepts that human behavior is mysterious and unpredictable. Even his unhappiest characters are players in a larger vision of a multicultural world in continual flux. The impulse to connect across cultures is a fundamental urge that's worth the pain and uncertainty; it offers the same rewards as learning a new language".
Praising the cast,
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum (born February 27, 1943) is an American film critic and author. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for '' The Chicago Reader'' from 1987 to 2008. He has published and edited numerous books about cinema and has contributed to ...
in the
Chicago Reader
The ''Chicago Reader'', or ''Reader'' (stylized as ЯEADER), is an American alternative newspaper in Chicago, Illinois, noted for its literary style of journalism and coverage of the arts, particularly film and theater. The ''Reader'' has been ...
commented that "volatile and sometimes daring performances by Catherine Deneuve, Gérard Depardieu, Gilbert Melki, Malik Zidi, and Lubna Azabal (as twins) contribute to the highly charged and novelistic experience". In a disagreeing note,
Lisa Schwarzbaum
Lisa Schwarzbaum (born July 5, 1952) is an American film critic. She joined ''Entertainment Weekly'' as a senior writer in 1991, working as a film critic for the magazine alongside Owen Gleiberman from 1995 to 2013.
Early life
Lisa Schwarzbaum w ...
, writing for
Entertainment Weekly
''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American online magazine, digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, ...
, found the film "strangely inert".
Accolades
*
Berlin Film Festival
The Berlin International Film Festival (), usually called the Berlinale (), is an annual film festival held in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festival has been held every February since 1978 and is one of Europ ...
(Germany)
**Nominated:
Golden Berlin Bear (André Téchiné)
*
César Awards
The César Award is the national film award of France. It is delivered in the ' ceremony and was first awarded in 1976. The nominations are selected by the members of twelve categories of filmmaking professionals and supported by the French Min ...
(France)
**Nominated: Most Promising Actor (Malik Zidi)
*
Satellite Awards
The Satellite Awards are annual awards given by the International Press Academy that are commonly noted in entertainment industry journals and blogs. The awards were originally known as the Golden Satellite Awards. The award ceremonies take place ...
(USA)
**Nominated: Best Motion Picture – Foreign Language
**Nominated: Best Overall DVD
**Nominated: Best Screenplay – Original (Pascal Bonitzer, Laurent Guyot and André Téchiné)
Bibliography
*Marshall, Bill, ''André Téchiné'', Manchester University Press, 2007,
Notes
External links
*
*
Holden, Stephen. (2006, July 14). ''A Decades-Long Love, Reunited But Unrequited''. The New York Times, p. B8
{{DEFAULTSORT:Changing Times (Film)
2004 films
Bisexuality-related films
Films directed by André Téchiné
2000s French-language films
French LGBTQ-related films
2004 romantic drama films
Films set in Morocco
Films produced by Paulo Branco
French romantic drama films
2000s French films
2004 LGBTQ-related films
Films with screenplays by Pascal Bonitzer