Movie Review

The Witnesses (2008)

Reviewed by Lisa Schwarzbaum | Feb 20, 2008

Lisa Schwarzbaum

Lisa Schwarzbaum is a film critic for EW

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EW's GRADE

B+

Details Limited Release: Jan 18, 2008; Rated: Unrated; Length: 152 Minutes; Genre: Drama; With: Emmanuelle Beart and Sami Bouajila

$THE WITNESSES Emmanuelle Béart, one of the characters who come to grips with the onset of AIDS in mid-\'80s France... Emmanuelle Beart$

THE WITNESSES Emmanuelle Béart, one of the characters who come to grips with the onset of AIDS in mid-'80s France in director André Téchiné's drama

A hot children's book writer (Emmanuelle Béart), her hot cop husband (Sami Bouajila), his hot young lover (Johan Libéreau), and an older gay doctor (Michel Blanc) — a friend of the lady's who's mad about the boy — mix and match in mid-1980s pansexual utopia — until death arrives unannounced in the form of AIDS. What the characters in The Witnesses — and we, the audience — pay testimony to in André Téchiné's urgent, compassionate, and ultimately optimistic French drama are the toll the epidemic has rung, and the responsibility of the living to choose life. B+

Originally posted Feb 20, 2008 Published in issue #980 Feb 29, 2008 Order article reprints

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