Andre Techine’s oblique yet tactile narratives of adults in conflict are often underrated (or overlooked), yet he’s one of the contemporary great filmmakers, attentive to the emotional geometry of desire and the innate conflict of relationships, but also fully aware of the potential of falling light and reserved gesture and fleeting expression to convey the passing momentousness of any interaction. “The Witnesses” (Les témoins, 2007) is set in 1984, where a series of characters of varying ages and predispositions, played by Michel Blanc, Emmanuelle Béart, Sami Bouajila, Johan Libéreau and Julie Depardieu, enact their roundelays in what is not quite a pre-AIDS idyll. Classy, cosmopolitan, never struggling to comfort, but through restraint compassionately exploring ticklish boundaries, “The Witnesses” is filled with passages of great filmmaking and manages to be much flightier, less doomy than films it resembles, such as “Jules and Jim.” “You can ask anything of your friends,” a character says; oui, but there are inevitable, unenviable consequences. 112m. (Ray Pride)
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