There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.

As an ash sea. Love and errors, ivory towers and theoretically escapes. Social chains and sandy expectations. A young man - axis of small society. A sentimental adventure, the sick and the good ways. A french novel about values and sentimental windows. Scarfs of past and future as Persian carpet. Emmanuelle Beart in skin of reed-character. A film about AIDS and decisions. About search of life sense and answers behind the words. Death as scrub. And the sound of things who makes measure of feelings. Fresco of a world, it is interesting for the art of director and for interesting cast. And, more that, for the final taste. For the traces of its parts - mirrors in fact.

I'm sorry, but I don't join all the praise that is given here. I really enjoyed this movie and acknowledge the gripping premise, and the good acting and direction. But I didn't like the script very much. All characters seemed a bit bland and there was little connection between any of them, even the supposed lovers like Manu and Adrien or Mehdi and Sarah. In fact, it seemed to me as if everyone was very much focusing on themselves and I couldn't find any sympathetic character among all of them. Take Manu's sister Julie, who even at the day of the funeral of her brother seemed to care more for her cherished role in an opera; or Adrien, who loses himself in his role of potential savior of the AIDS-epidemic; or Mehdi, who was more involved with fear for his own health, and who switches shamelessly between Manu, Sarah and in the end even Manu's sister, while in the meantime relentlessly executing a witch-hunt on brothels and prostitutes, even if this means hurting innocent people like Julie. Or Sarah, who sees her baby not as a responsibility but as a burden. Sure enough, Manu's character is endearing: young and careless and on top of everything in the beginning, but in his (extremely improbable) affair with Medhi he doesn't hesitate a minute to sack Adrien in a very harsh way.The whole AIDS-related section with Adrien (who at the start of the movie impressed me as a low-key local physician) suddenly becoming a professor and a national AIDS-expert, and all the lecture-like information on the disease, struck me as a bit patronizing and undermined the dramatic storyline. Furthermore the movie seems like 20 minutes too long, the part after Manu's death doesn't fit in at all. Are we to think, in witnessing in the final scene yet another peaceful picnic at the river, that everything is as it was before? The new boyfriend for Adrien is as improbable as the coupling of Manu and Medhi (even Adrien seems to think that). And why this complicated nationality-issue, whatever language he spoke it never did come out as genuine. And as someone already commented on this site: did Manu really have only one shirt and one pair of trousers?!? On the other hand I have to praise Sami Bouajila and young Johan Libéreau, they did an excellent job and carried the whole movie. And for some reason I really liked the photography, it has this French quality of balancing between the intimate and the claustrophobic and makes French movies often feel like your stepping into someone's private home. And most important of all: Téchiné succeeds in avoiding all larmoyancy: it's as if the fast pace of the movie tries to keep up with the lively spirit of Manu, the story waltzes around the rocks of melodrama and as such it resembles Real Life itself: in spite of everything the band has to play on.

Les Témoins (The Witnesses) is another fine artwork by French director André Téchiné that continues to examine relationships in times of stress and through areas of rough travel. As written by Téchiné, Laurent Guyot, and Viviane Zingg this film is a love story and a social commentary on life in 1984 when AIDS raised its ugly head and disrupted lives, hopes and relationships. What could have been a heavy-handed woeful tale is instead a story about ordinary people and how the spectre of the then 'new disease' affected a small group of friends. In the intimacy of the story there is an opportunity to reflect and to see more clearly the atmosphere of that time in history. Sarah (Emmanuelle Béart) is a writer of children's books married to Mehdi (Sami Bouajila), a member of the Paris police force vice squad. They have an open marriage and have just given birth to a baby boy - a factor that disrupts their separate lives while conflicting their married life. Sarah has a physician friend Adrien (Michel Blanc, so memorable in his role in 'Monsieur Hire') who is gay, and while he is older, he still longs for the company of young men. Adrien meets the young catering student Manu (Johan Libéreau), a lad whose sexual appetite is satisfied by trysts in parks, back rooms of bars, etc. Manu and his opera singer sister Julie (Julie Depardieu) live modestly in a sleazy hotel cum brothel that is under surveillance by Mehdi. Adrien and Manu strike up a friendship and are invited to join Sarah and Mehdi to Sarah's mother's cabin by the sea and while there a relationship between Manu and Mehdi begins, one that will become an affair in secret. A strange disease comes to public attention and it is Adrien who is in charge of the investigation of the disease now called AIDS. Though Adrien's ties with Manu have become platonic while Manu see Mehdi daily, Adrien is the first to notice lesions on Manu, lesions that are the hallmark of AIDS. How this discovery affects the lives of each of the characters we have met (the 'witnesses' to a very important time in our history) serves as the crux of the story - part tragedy and part a torch of resilience the weaves the story to a close in an honest, touching but never maudlin manner. The acting is consistently excellent, the sort of ensemble acting that keeps the focus on the message of the film rather than on individual attention to characters. The movie is beautifully photographed by Julien Hirsch and the musical score by Philippe Sarde wisely blends excerpts from Vivaldi and Mozart with original music that recalls the 1980s. This is yet another triumph for André Téchiné - a film that deserves the widest possible audience. Grady Harp

Overall, this movie was OK. The male lead actors all were very good and believable in their parts. The homosexuality was presented in a natural, matter-of-fact manner, instead of pedantic or problematic. The way the start of the aids era was captured was disturbing, but it seemed very realistic. There were some things in this movie that annoyed me however. First of all, the female characters. Depardieu is your typical withdrawn, a-sexual, artistic, female French cinema archetype. I can live with that though. Far more irritating was the presence of Beart, who was totally miscast. What is a blown-up plastic Barbie doll doing in a movie that is situated in the early eighties, when plastic surgery was not even properly born yet?? Her acting is (partly due to her renovated face) very flat and expressionless and it would have been better if she had been altogether left out. An other revealing mistake is the American guy/gay, who shows up in the last part of the movie; quite confusing when a character who is so proud of his multi-lingual talents has such a strong foreign accent when he speaks his mother tongue...