André Téchiné

[Michael]

I'm desperately looking for Wild Reeds. Available on DVD (with English subtitles) anywhere?

[Michael Kerpan]

I'm desperately looking for Wild Reeds. Available on DVD (with English subtitles) anywhere?

This was easily available here in the US (used to see it at Borders) -- is it out of print already?

[Michael]

Aww that's too bad. I have a new crush on Stephane Rideau after watching the brilliant Come Undone today. My partner went nuts over Nils Ohlund who played Stephane's ex. Actually all the guys in the film are beautiful in their own ways. But Stephane.. damn =P~

[kieslowski_67]

Can anyone tell me what song people were singing at Pierre's wedding early in the film, the same song that was whistled over the opening credits?

And how do you interpret the ending? Was Serge in "Loin" (2001) meant to be the continuation of Serge in "wild reeds"? (Stéphane Rideau played the same named character in both films) Similar thing for Gaël Morel's character Francois that also appeared in "Loin".

Edit: I got the answer to the second question. Just popped in "Loin" and indeed both Serge and Francois are the same characters as in "wild reeds". Serge obivously left the farm and became a long distance truck driver, while Francois became a film maker just like what Gael Morel became later in his career.

[David Ehrenstein]

Plues Gael Morel continues to cast Stephane Rideau in his films -- thus making him the Number One French Gay Film Pin-uP -- even though he;sstraight in real life.

[kieslowski_67]

Hey Guys, please don't try to turn this thread into sth that idolizes your gay icon.

Someone please answer my first question, please. Thanks!

[David Ehrenstein]

Les Passagers is a masterpiece! I had read about Guiguet for years but none oif his films have ever been released here. A friend sent me a CARE package last year consisting of Le Belles Manieres, Faubourg St. Germaine,Le Mirage and Les Passagers. No sooner did I enjoy them all then it was reported in the press that Guiguet had died. I felt like a personal friend had expired.

Guiguet was a long-term HIV+ Les passagers is particularly insightful about AIDS. There's also a Guiguet short An Ordinary Night in the anotholgy film Love Reinvented. It's about a guy rdiing on his bike through Paris at night to go to the hospital where his lover is dying.

[Michael]

We could easily start a thread on Stephane Rideau I think. With screencaps preferably.

He's extremely fetching again in Guiget's les Passagers. I easily found this disc (English subs folks) at fnac in Paris last month after reading DE and other's comments on it in a_f_b.

I regret for not taking French in high school. kieslowski_67, Rideau is not a gay icon. He's the ICON. Time to pull out Come Undone which visits my mind almost everyday.

[Lino]

Hmm, so no love for Jeremie Elkaim, then? He's such a cutie...

[Michael]

Of course he's a cutie but I see too much of myself in Jeremie's character Mathieu (and a bit in Pierre also). I adore guys (like Rideau) much smaller than me and I'm 6'4 tall.

[tavernier]

I'm surprised there's no thread for this.

It opens Feb. 1 at the IFC Center in Manhattan.

[yoshimori]

Like his last US release, Changing Times, The Witnesses is technically strong Techine. His team's command of contemporary art-cinema camera and, especially, editing style (though Techine may not have originated any of it) gives the film a lot of forward momentum. The movie - about the fight against AIDS in 1983-1984 - is perhaps more schematic, content-wise, than Changing Times, but it's more nuanced than a hundred other similarly themed films. [All of which reminds me - where's my dvd of Les voleurs?!]

[colinr0380]

No news on Les Voleurs but the latest MovieMail catalogue said that The Witnesses is being released by Artificial Eye on DVD in Britain at the end of February.

[yoshimori]

Yep. Here it is at amazon.

[foggy eyes]

DVD Times review of the AE disc. I really liked the film - Téchiné draws some superb performances (especially from Michel Blanc & Sami Bouajila), and the cinematography is utterly gorgeous in the sun-drenched first half.

[pro-bassoonist]

DVD Times review of the AE disc. I really liked the film - Téchiné draws some superb performances (especially from Michel Blanc & Sami Bouajila), and the cinematography is utterly gorgeous in the sun-drenched first half.

I have to agree. More than likely this is Artificial Eye's strongest release this year together with The Singer. Techine is a master of contemporary nuanced storytelling and the difficult subject he deals with in this film is addressed flawlessly. I still believe that his best contemporary drama is Those Who Love Me Can Take The Train but rest assured his camerawork is simply superb here.

Pro-B

[yoshimori]

I still believe that his best contemporary drama is Those Who Love Me Can Take The Train

You're confusing Techine and Chereau. Sometimes overlapping content, but quite different approaches.

[foggy eyes]

I'm a little confused. Noel's DVD Times review of the AE disc of The Witnesses states that the AR is 1.85, but when I saw it in 35mm it was 2.35:1. Can anybody who has the disc confirm which ratio it's in? I hope AE haven't screwed this up like Gabrielle. Also, it's worth mentioning that Soda Pictures's UK release of Strayed is gorgeous.

[pro-bassoonist]

I still believe that his best contemporary drama is Those Who Love Me Can Take The Train

You're confusing Techine and Chereau. Sometimes overlapping content, but quite different approaches.

I have no idea why I wrote what I did above. Those Who Love Me Can Take The Train is indeed a Chereau film.

Pro-B

[David Ehrenstein]

Well they're both gay.

Techine is the one who had an affair with Roland Barthes.

[Stefan Andersson]

A new 2-film DVD from Cahiers is up at their site. Téchinés Le Lieu du crime (1986) and Les Innocents (2003). Specs say English version with French subs, but this is a misprint. Why Not Productions who makes these dvds tell me the films are French language, no subs.

[Michael]

Finally watched Wild Reeds from the new Techine collection after years of waiting. It's everything I expected of the film. A summer breeze of a film with gorgeous young people exploring sexuality and sex. What lovely French country side! So warm and fresh, I just wanted to slap everyone to stop brooding and smell the lilacs. But the brooding was there for a good reason. The film is sprinkled with proignant moments - one of them involving Serge seducing Francois, awakening the sexuality in him that he never knew he had. Very beautifully handled. The cinematography is simple and relaxed, it moves as if only a country breeze sails it.

In all, a truly lovely little film with a pretty palette of "vintage" colors. How I would love to having grown up in that village where pretty boys and girls roamed around and films like Through a Glass Darkly and Lola made their run.

I can see how that film influenced Lifshitz who made the sublime coming-of-age Presque Rien (Come Undone) but has Techine made a film equivelant to Lifshitz's next film Wild Side (his masterpiece IMO)?

[David Ehrenstein]

Well they're very different in a great many ways, as is obvious from Techine's most recent film The Witnesses.

[Michael]

Wild Reeds is the only Techine film I've seen. Not knowing anything about this filmmaker but I saw plenty of similarities between Wild Reeds and Come Undone - the sexual awakening, the brooding, the countryside, the life-goes-on ending, and of course Rideau. Wild Reeds is straight/bi/gay while Come Undone is 100% gay.

What is your take on Wild Reeds or Techine in general, David?

[David Ehrenstein]

Slowly but surely he's become a really great filmmaker. As a Cahiers critic his taste was often daring. He rated Sydney Pollack's This Property is condemned a masterpeice back in 1966. If you're familiar with the film it has a lot in common with those Techine would make with Catherine Deneuve. In fact I would credit him with smoothing Deneuve's transition fro jeune fille to fully realized adult. His first important film, Barocco, suggested that he was aiming for a career as a stylist along the lines of Bertolucci. But Scene of the Crime changed that. And Wild Reeds marked a new direction for his career. While Gael Morel's character is obviously of pivotal importance to him as a gay man (and Morel has carved out a career of his own as a filmmaker that's quite striking , particularly Three Dancing Slaves aka. Le Clan), Elodie Bouchez's character is just as much a self-portrait, particularly in her growing realization of who she likes and why and what that means to who she is.

Of Techine's early work, French Provincial is great fun particularly for the great scene where Marie-France Pisier has a laughing fit on seeing Garbo in Camille.

Over the past few years Techine could always be counted on to deliver the goods as an intelligent filmmaker, but with The Witnesses he's hit a new career high. Michael Blanc is amazing as the Barthes character. All older gay men in Techine are portraits of his ex-lover (see also J'embrasse pas) as the younger ones (Johan Libreau in The Witnesses ) are portraits of his many boys-on-the-side (one of whom I knew WAY back in the day.)

A Masters Thesis could be wirtten on the evolution of Techine's cinema in relation to that of his frequent collaborator (and Barthes-sharer) Jacques Nolot, whose Before I Forget is beyond amazing.