Witnesses, The

Witnesses, The

Andre Techine's (Wild Reeds and Changing Times) lush drama, The Witnesses, follows a close knit group of friends who are faced with the dawn of a sexual revolution in the early 1980s. The Witnesses tracks the relationship of a young writer (Emmanuelle Bear), her detective boyfriend (Sami Bouajila), a renown doctor (Michel Blanc) and how their lives collide when a young, attractive gay man joins their circle. Set in Paris and the countryside, Techine blends the storylines and parallel lives with an erotic naturalism, yet never ignores the consequences of sexual freedom. The New York Times hailed "French director Andre Techine is a master at evoking personality quirks, the unpredictability of relationships and the haphazard way love affairs, friendships and social groups form and dissolve", and Newsday calls The Witnesses "one of the finest fiction film accounts of a free yet frightful moment in time".