Changing Times

There were places that just ate up time. For instance, machinery working or the one I didn't like at all was the time spent on killing the goat. Yet it's okay. Catherine and Gerard were excellent.

It was nice to Catherine and Gerard acting together. They have tremendous chemistry. The film proves that not all love is lost over the years. It was a touching film of re-discovering love. Andre Techine is a master of showing the world the simple details of life.

Hard to say how bad this movie is! I don't understand the other reviews at all. Everything about this film is rushed, superficial, contrived, and it has no decent ending. I know something about acting and this would not pass a beginning acting class or audition. What a waste of fine talent--- and I like G Depardieu.Sub title or not, they are going through the motions with no connection. Where's the love? None. The gay subplot is rushed and unnecessary. Skip it.

Great movie....

French film directors -- forgive me for generalizing! -- seem to have an unquenchable thirst for dramas of obscure passion and contorted relationships, 'romantic comedies' that are anything but comic. The best of such films are delightfully whimsical as they flirt with despair and betrayal. The worst of them bog down in simple melodrama or clog their scripts with implications of more profundity than they deliver. "Changing Times" is neither among the best nor the worst. It's a well-made film that goes nowhere ... well acted on the whole and creatively filmed but not very engaging.The exception to the 'well acted' tag is the performance of Gerard Depardieu as Antoine, a successful engineer who has rekindled an obsession with his "first love" Cecile after thirty years and who comes to Morocco to recapture .... what? her of course, but also his own emotional wholeness. Unfortunately, Depardieu is the most over-used actor in the business and thus has exhausted his credibility in any role except the role of himself. Alas, he was superb in his prime, even though he was always too recognizable really to cloak himself in a character. His best role ever was Cyrano. Now he's become lumpish, luggish, and sluggish. Possibly an 'actor' instead of a 'star' might have brought this script to life ...... but the marketing ploy of "Changing Times" was obviously the reuniting of Depardieu with Catherine Deneuve (Cecile), whose on-screen romances had been compelling decades ago. It's interesting, in a modest way, to behold them as aging and fading lovers; Deneuve reveals herself as a mummification of beauty in a way that suits the script and the mood of the film. But that cinema-history fascination is scarcely enough to compel an audience's attention for 100 minutes, so naturally there are sub-plots, sub-romances, that should offer sub-tleties but don't. Ceciles's husband is a repulsive narcissist, acted very convincingly by Gilbert Melki. Their son is a repulsive bi-sexual narcissist, absorbed in his identity crisis as half French and half Moroccan. His male lover in Morocco and his female lover in Paris seem both to understand his shallow commitment to anyone but himself better than he does, yet they allow him to gratify his selfishness with painful passivity. The female lover is a Moroccan whose twin sister rejects her -- wisely, one would say -- but who is herself drug-addicted and emotionally unavailable to her son. And the twin sister eventually runs off with the husband. How operatic! How French! The secondary characters are all excellent in their roles, perhaps because they are 'unknown' as stars.And there's the setting: Tangiers, Morocco. Frankly, not much of the place is revealed, aside from a scene that shows a sullen throng of Sub-Saharan Africans waiting on the cliffs outside the city for any desperate opportunity to cross the straits to Europe. Why bother with such dabs of sociology if nothing is meant by them? I've been to Tangiers; this film avoided any evocation of the mood of the place as I remember it.Bottom line? Watch it if it's offered on an Air France flight, but don't bother to rent it.

Apparently in André Téchiné's Changing Times Gérard Depardieu and Catherine Deneuve are together again after appearing in The Last Metro all those years ago. Surely though, they could have picked better material than this to appear in.This strangely turgid and dramatically static drama is set in Morocco and features some great views of Tangier, and tries to probe the cultural gulf between the French ex-pats who live there and the Muslims, but the film comes across more as a vehicle for a reunion between two great French acting legends than anything else.Depardieu plays Antoine, a successful construction supervisor who is in Tangier, to oversee a new housing project, but his reasons for being there are not exclusively professional. Antoine as it turns out still holds a flame for Cecile (Deneuve), the first and only great love of Antoine's life.It's been more than 30 years since they split up, but Antoine, who never married, has apparently never stopped thinking about her for a single minute of a single day. So whilst Antoine seems determined to live the bachelor life, Cecile's life is so complex that she seems unendingly short-tempered.Cecile is the host of a successful local radio show, is married to Nathan, a Moroccan doctor (Gilbert Melki), and has a grown son named Sami (Malik Zidi), who makes his home in Paris but has returned to Tangier with his own issues. Sami has bought Nadia, (Lubna Azabal.) to Tangier with her son, but he is equally interested in rekindling a relationship with a local Moroccan boy Bilal (Idir Rachati). Nadia, in turn, has a problematic relationship with a more traditional twin sister named Aicha she hasn't seen in six years.The whole proceedings verge on tawdry soap opera and although these characters are richly textured and undeniably sympathetic, the under-written screenplay doesn't really give them much to do. There's very little plot and even less drama, so the whole film comes across as desultory at best. And in a totally silly turn of events, Antoine attempts to persuade Cecile to fall in love with him by consulting Nabila (Nabila Baraka), seeking a voodoo spell that would awaken Cecile's love for Antoine.Though Téchiné doesn't deal with it in a ham-fisted way, his film is also interested in exploring what it is like to live in a city where cultures crash, Tangier is obviously a city where McDonald's and traditional sorcery both do a thriving business practically side by side and where illegal immigrants camp out in the coast, waiting for an opportunity to travel to Spain.Changing Times feels like three separate movies all plied into one. Sami who is trying to balance his relationship with Nadia and Bilal feels like it comes from a totally separate film and Nadia's efforts to see her twin sister also feels like a sort of add-on.Also, Deneuve and Depardieu don't have a lot of chemistry together; consequently, you never get the feeling that this is supposed to be the timeless love and devotion. As it stands Changing Times is a rather spotted and ramshackle film that tries to explore the themes of eternal passion but comes across as rather shallow and unsophisticated. Mike Leonard October 06.

What chemistry these actors have. No wonder they've made so many films together. Love both of them and this is a really interesting and touching story. I could watch the two of them for hours. Wonderful film.

Great movie and purchase!

film sieht toll aus. Deneuve und Derardieu sind hervorrogend.

Ansich ist die Grundidee des Fims recht nett und nachvollziehbar. Mann setzt alles daran, seine Jugendliebe wiederzufinden und ist besessen von der Idee, dass Sie zusammengehören. Diese hat jedoch Familie und lebt scheinbar in fester Beziehung. Die Handlung plätschert gemächlich vor sich hin, und wird durch die Ergänzung von Nebenhandlungen für die jungen Darsteller (Homosexualität, Entfremdung in der Ferne, Emanzipation) eher verwässert als aufgelockert. So quält man sich trotz der Darsteller richtig durch den Film durch, immer in der Hoffnung, dass er bald richtig anfängt. Vorwiegend triste Sets, die auch nicht besonders in Szene gesetzt sind. Als Buch kann so eine Geschichte funktionieren, als Film meiner Meinung nach nicht.Was bleibt ist das Gefühl, etwas besseres mit der Zeit hätte anfangen zu können.

Eigentlich weiss ich nicht wo ich anfangen soll.Beziehungen sind das Thema.Ein Plädoyer sich eigene Beziehungen / Lebensräume anzueignen aber nicht darüber hinaus weitere zeitweise Beziehungen abzulehnen. Zwillingsschwester nit sehr verschiedenem Lebensweg (was gerade nach den Ergebnissen der Zwillingsforschung kein einfaches Unterfangen ist) gehen sich aus dem Weg, von wem der beiden ist das Kind ? Nicht alles wird bis ins Detail erläutert, viel bleibt der Intuation des Zuschauers überlassen und doch ist der Text und filmisch gezeigte Hintergrund gestopft voll mit Hinweisen.Mehrere Lebensmöglichkeiten bieten sich und werden gelebt (der homosexulle Sohn, der sich dennoch Partnerschaft nur mit einer Frau zutraut)...Tanger/Afrika und Ceuta/Europa ist auch so ein Pärchen.Dazu ein spielerisch befreiender Einschub von Altmeister Techine als alles erzählt scheint: Kurzfilm quasi animiert in harten Kontrasten für alle alten Jungs, wer wollte nicht mal Baggerführer sein ?Depardieu wieder einmal gewandelt in einer Rolle als leitender Projektbegleiter aus bürgerlichem Milieu, weit entfernt vom bekannten mimisch ausschweifenden Helden.Etwas störend ist die mässige deutsche Sychnronisation mit ähnlichen Stimmen und ähnlichen klanglichen Namen (was man allerdings Techine ankreiden muss).Ein Film weit qualitativ entfernt von deutschen der 80er und 90er.Lediglich in den letzten Jahren gibt es auf deutscher Seite vergleichbares (z.B. Wolfsburg/Petzold; seltsamer Weise nicht bei Amazon gelistet,) aber nie in dieser Dichte.