Openly gay French writer-director André Téchiné, probably best known to LGBT film audiences for 1994's The Wild Reeds, returns with The Witnesses, a beautifully nuanced character drama set in Paris at the outset of the AIDS epidemic.
The comely Manu ( Johan Libéreau, pictured ) has just arrived in Paris in the summer of 1984 and moves in with his sister, Julie ( Julie Depardieu ) , an aspiring opera singer, at a rundown hotel. The hotel, actually nothing much more than a brothel, is run by an older man ( Jacques Nolot, writer-director-star of the terrific gay-themed Before I Forget ) who plays chess with Manu on occasion. Sandra ( Constance Dollé ) , a lively prostitute in Madonna drag, is another resident who hangs out with Manu at the new-wave club across from the hotel. ( There, she lip-syncs a lively version of 'Marcia Baïla' by Les Rita Mitsouko. )
But these are but brief distractions for Manu, who is more interested in cruising. Young but hardly innocent, Manu is the quintessential boy toy, an object of desire for the other male characters in the film. Out cruising one night, he meets the much older Adrien ( Michel Blanc ) , a doctor who falls head over heels for the young hunk; however, Manu prefers a platonic friendship. Adrien takes Manu for a weekend jaunt to a country home owned by friends Sarah ( Emmanuelle Béart ) and her husband, Mehdi ( Sami Bouajila ) . This bourgeois young couple is open about affairs ( Sarah insists, in fact, that it's one of the strongholds of their relationship ) but both are surprised when Mehdi, who works as a vice cop, finds himself drawn to Manu. Sarah, who wants to move away from children's literature, uses the affair as the basis for her first adult novel and narrates much of the film as it unfolds.
As the affair increases in intensity, so does Adrien's jealousy, and he tells Manu, 'You hold all the cards. Everyone wants you.' But Adrien's jealousy changes to concern when Manu learns that he's contracted AIDS. From that point, the complex emotions of the key players swirling about Manu will shift as they learn of his diagnosis and as the virus, nearly unstoppable in those early years, invades their previously carefree lives. The device allows Téchiné's characters to display an array of reactions—fear, regret and anger—to the news of Manu's illness. Unlike many of their American counterparts, Téchiné's characters are decidedly unsentimental when faced with the sobering news.
Téchiné shoots his film in mustard yellow and Mediterranean blue, reflecting the sunny seaside getaway where the affair first begins, but the bright colors become emblems of anxiety and indifference ( especially when worn by ethereal beauty Béart, who is swathed in bright yellow dresses throughout ) . Bouajila, meanwhile, wears bright red shirts—a literal target for Manu's affections and lust.
Although The Witnesses covers familiar territory in focusing on a protagonist with AIDS, the complex reactions of the characters and unusual turns in Téchiné's densely layered script ( co-written with Laurent Guyot ) provide a welcome addition to a legion of AIDS-related movies and the French perspective, so different from our own, never fails to intrigue.
The Witnesses, which plays at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport, beginning Fri., May 16, will have its Chicago premiere Thurs., May 15, at the same location and serve as a benefit for Vital Bridges, 6:30-9:30 p.m. The social hour/screening will be followed by a discussion of the film with yours truly. A raffle and post-party sponsored by Absolut follows will follow at Halsted's Bar and Grill, 3441 N. Halsted. Tickets for the movie premiere only are $25 or $40 for premiere and post-party, and can be purchased by calling Todd at 312-948-2786. See www.musicboxtheatre.com for more.
Queer outsider filmmaker William E. Jones will be in town to preside over two screenings of his fascinating, disturbing and sexy Tearoom. The film consists of an assemblage of surveillance footage shot in July and August of 1962 by the Mansfield, Ohio, police department of a men's room in the public square. Jones has done minimal cutting to the footage: He has removed an apparent obtrusive voice over and shifted the establishing shots from the end of the film to the beginning—otherwise, it is pretty much intact.
The 56-minute result, shot in grainy color, has the look of a graphic home movie and is enthralling. We see men of all ages and sizes, Black and white, surreptitiously having sex in and around the two stalls in the cramped men's room, unaware that a cameraman is shooting them through a two-way mirror. The culmination of the fast cutting between trysts, along with the details focused on by the camera operator, becomes as interesting as the footage itself. Naturally, a lot of the faces are the same—men returning repeatedly to get off. A Black teenager is seen in multiple encounters, as is an elderly white guy in a striped shirt and crew cut. ( He's like the king cocksucker of the place. ) Every now and then a phone number is exchanged, but there's no real intimacy and, certainly, no kissing. Even the act of anal intercourse, which several of the men engage in furtively, doesn't seem intimate and is engaged in quickly with one eye toward the entrance.
This fascinating artifact of gay culture is mesmerizing ( the mind imagines all the different back stories for the different men ) , sexy ( by way of its illicit nature ) and, lastly, heartbreaking. Given the date of the footage and the reason for its existence, Jones doesn't even need to point out that it was used to put many of these men in prison.
Tearoom plays as part of the White Light Cinema program, a new alternative film series, and screens Sun., May 18, at The Nightingale, 1084 N. Milwaukee, at 6:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. Mansfield 1962, a nine-minute experimental short made from the original footage by Jones, will also be shown. Limited copies of a companion book, Tearoom, will also be available for sale at the screenings. www.whitelightcinema.com
Check out my archived reviews at www.windycitytimes.com or www.knightatthemovies.com . Readers can leave feedback at the latter Web site, where there is also ordering information on my book of collected film reviews, Knight at the Movies 2004-2006.
