Les temps qui changent (2004)

Directed by: André Techiné | 90 minutes | drama, romance | Actors: Catherine Deneuve, Gerard Depardieu, Gilbert Melki, Malik Zidi, Lubna Azabal, Tanya Lopert, Nabila Baraka, Idir Elomri, Nadem Rachati, Jabir Elomri

In ‘Les temps qui changent’ three veterans of French cinema are united. Director André Téchiné and film icons Catherine Deneuve and Gérard Depardieu. All three have a long and glorious film past. You would therefore expect that this combination should guarantee a successful production, but, as the title suggests, times are changing. If you don’t take this into account as a director, you can run into problems.

In ‘Les temps qui changent’ we meet the former lovers Antoine and Cécile, who for various reasons ended up in the Moroccan city of Tangier. Their love seems to blossom again.
Twenty years ago, Deneuve and Depardieu might still have been able to make that love tangible. In 2005 you usually find more sexual tension between two fresh corpses than between these monuments of French film. In any case, there is little life in both main characters and the sometimes solemn dialogues do little good either. Moreover, those dialogues clash with the cool hand-turned shots.

In addition to the story about Antoine and Cécile, the film has many sidelines that are only very briefly elaborated. The gay son of Cécile, her unfaithful husband, her daughter-in-law who is addicted to tranquilizers and her twin sister who is unprincipled, all are incorporated and written into the story without much care and nuance.

So far you could speak of a sympathetic failure. But the way in which the Moroccan characters are painted is definitely unsympathetic. Unreliable, barbaric, only on principle as long as their own interests are not harmed, too lazy to work and still too cheated to repair their own car. In this film, all existing prejudices are confirmed with little subtlety. If you are also unlucky enough to have both French and Moroccan blood, like Cécile’s son, then you are very sorry. All this makes sitting out ‘Les temps qui changent’ a somewhat uncomfortable task.

Times are changing, but director André Téchiné does not seem to have wanted to know anything about it. He made a chat film according to a tried and tested French recipe, with two old French stars and with a narrow look at the former French protectorate of Morocco. All in all an annoying film about annoying people. Waste of time and effort.