Thursday, June 26, 2008

What I'm Watching #149


thewitnesses
Originally uploaded by Randuwa
Is the film "The Witnesses", by French directeur, André Téchiné. The film is billed as a period piece, set in the early and mid-80's in Paris mostly; if I hadn't been told that, I never would have guessed it. Not much changes in Paris.

The story is about a group of friends (who fight and have lots of sex); and when one of them develops AIDS; they still fight and have sex, but the fighting is mostly about him, and he's the only one no longer having sex. Pictured on the cover in the lower left corner, the movie is really all about his arrival into the world of these friends and then it's about the sex he is or isn't having with each of them, and then it's about his death, and finally it's about how the death frees the woman in the yellow dress from her writer's block as she obsesses upon the task of writing his life's story. And whose name is completely absent from the DVD cover? Very strange, when you think about it.

I enjoyed this film, found the characters interesting, if the storyline itself was a bit dated--not in the sense that it was set in the 80's, but rather in the sense that the movie brought no new insight to the "our world is turned upside-down by AIDS" motif. I was thankful that, in the end, the cast didn't spontaneously burst into a chorus line.....

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