Changing Times (film)

Changing Times (Les temps qui changent)
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	André Téchiné
Produced by	Paulo Branco
Written by	André Téchiné Laurent Guyot Pascal Bonitzer
Starring	Gérard Depardieu Catherine Deneuve Gilbert Melki Malik Zidi Lubna Azabal
Music by	Juliette Garrigues
Cinematography	Julien Hirsch
Editing by	Martine Giordano
Distributed by	Koch-Lorber Films (U.S.)
Release date(s)	8 December 2004 (France) 14 July 2006 (USA)
Running time	95 minutes
Country	France
Language	French Arabic
Budget	5.310.000 € [1]
Box office	4,099,305 [2]

Changing Times (Les temps qui changent) is a 2004 French drama film directed by André Téchiné, starring Catherine Deneuve and Gérard Depardieu. 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.^[3]

Plot

Antoine, a successful French civil engineer, travels to Tangiers 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 ago, Cécile. Having discovered that Cécile lives in Tangiers, he begins anonymously sending her roses everyday 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 just to divorce later, is currently married to a much younger man, Nathan, a Moroccan Jewish physician.

Antoine has literally counted the time (31 years 8 months 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 wall, 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 bisexual son, Sami, who lives in Paris, appears unannounced with his live-in girlfriend, Nadia, and Saïd, her 9-year-old son by another man. Sami often leaves them alone to engage in trysts with his Moroccan boyfriend Bilal, who briefly lived in Paris and is now looking after a villa for its absents 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 is just able to glimpse her sister from far. When Nadia addiction to prescriptions pills is exposed by Nathan, they are forced to find their own living arrangements and Sami decides that is time to go back 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, Cecile encourage by Rachel, a friend and coworker, accepts Antonie advances, initially proposing a brief fling, rather than his preference for them to end their days together. They make love and Antoine is closer to reach his goal just when he was losing all hope. However, shortly thereafter, Antoine suffers a serious accident after a landslide at the construction site where he works and is hospitalized in a comatose state. Cécile visits him constantly at the hospital.

Cécile and Nathan separate. He moves to Casablanca accepting a new job. It is suggested that he has started a relationship with Aïcha. Bilal refuses to take Samis’s offer of a trip to Paris, to which Sami, Nadia and Saïd return. Months later in one of Cécile’s hospital visits, Antoine wake up from his comatose state, and their hands join.

Cast

• Catherine Deneuve as Cécile
• Gérard Depardieu as Antoine
• Gilbert Melki 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. The film was released on DVD in the United States on 3 October 2006.

Accolades

• Berlin Film Festival (Germany)
  • Nominated: Golden Berlin Bear (André Téchiné)

• César Awards (France)
  • Nominated: Most Promising Actor (Malik Zidi)

• Satellite Awards (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, ISBN 0719058317

Notes

1. ^ "Les Temps qui changent". jpbox-office. http://wwww.jpbox-office.com/fichfilm.php?id=1153. Retrieved April 21, 2011. 
2. ^ "Les Temps qui changent". jpbox-office. http://wwww.jpbox-office.com/fichfilm.php?id=1153. Retrieved April 21, 2011. 
3. ^ Marshall, André Téchiné, p. 132

External links

• Changing Times at the Internet Movie Database
• Holden, Stephen. (2006, July 14). A Decades-Long Love, Reunited But Unrequited. The New York Times, p. B8