Changing Times
Picture:
C Sound: B- Extras: C- Film: C
André
Téchiné has brought together two of France’s longest running, internationally
known movie stars, Catherine Deneuve & Gerard Depardieu and made a mess
with Changing Times, a shocking bad
and muddled mess in which they were each others first loves decades ago. Now, later in their lives, can they go back
and pick up where they left off. Is her
love affair with a much younger man a sign she misses him? Is anything in this film worth seeing?
Téchiné
even throws in a subplot about gay lovers, wolf attacks, shaky camerawork,
criminal behavior and the film thinks this makes everything al the more
real. However, it really just makes it
look like amateur hour and wasting the 100 minutes on all those subplots
sabotages any chance the basic “love lost” story might work. There is a reason these stars are stars and
to waste them to pretension, cliché and “hip” shortsighted trickery is a
disaster. He and the script he co-wrote
should have pushed their star power and acting abilities to the limit. Instead, we get a clunker that is best
skipped.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.66 X 1 image is shockingly poor, with awful Video
Black, major detail issues and a generally muddy look. What Happened? A disclaimer says this is the way the
director intended. If so, he needs his
eyes examined! Julien Hirsch shot this
and how lame and pretentious it is, as the idiotic legacy of Dogme continues. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo has Pro Logic
surrounds that make this more watchable, but the presentation of degraded image
is more pretentious than ever. The only
extras are the theatrical trailer and interview with actor Gilbert Melki.
- Nicholas Sheffo
