Changing Times (film)
| Changing Times (Les Temps qui changent) |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | André Téchiné |
| Produced by | Paulo Branco |
| Written by | André Téchiné Laurent Guyot Pascal Bonitzer |
| Starring |
Gérard Depardieu Catherine Deneuve Gilbert Melki Malik Zidi Lubna Azabal |
| Music by | Juliette Garrigues |
| Cinematography | Julien Hirsch |
| Edited by | Martine Giordano |
| Distributed by | Gemini Films |
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Release date
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Running time
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95 minutes |
| Country | France |
| Language | French Arabic |
| Budget | €5.3 million |
| Box office | €4.1 million |
Changing Times (original title: Les Temps qui changent) is a 2004 French drama film directed by André Téchiné, starring Catherine Deneuve and Gérard Depardieu. The film follows a construction engineer who goes to Morocco to oversee a new project and catch up with the woman he loved 30 years ago.
Antoine, a successful French civil engineer, travels to Tangiers to supervise the construction of buildings for a large media center. His real motivation, however, is to seek out his first love from thirty years before, Cécile. Having discovered that Cécile lives in Tangiers, he begins anonymously sending her roses every day at the radio station where she hosts a French-Arabic program, but she is uninterested in her secret admirer. Cécile, who married a man shortly after ending her relationship with Antoine, only to divorce later, is currently married to a younger man, Nathan, a Moroccan Jewish physician.
Antoine has literally counted the days (31 years, 8 months, and 20 days) since he last saw Cécile and has spent years tracking her down. He has come to Morocco expressly to make her fall back in love with him. He has never married and in his obsession to win Cécile’s heart he recruits the help of Nabila, his Moroccan assistant, to investigate the possibility of using witchcraft. Antoine and Cécile eventually cross paths in a supermarket when Antoine walks into a plate glass window, injuring his nose, and Nathan, who is with Cécile, rushes over to administer first aid.
Around the time Antoine arrives in Tangier, Cécile and Nathan’s son, Sami, who lives in Paris, arrives for a visit with his live-in girlfriend, Nadia, and Saïd, her 9-year-old son by another man. Sami often leaves them alone in order to visit with his Moroccan boyfriend Bilal, who briefly lived in Paris and is now looking after a villa for its absent owners. Bilal more or less accepts Sami’s ambivalence and they restart their affair. Nadia, meanwhile, hopes to reconnect with her identical twin sister, Aïcha, a conservative observant Muslim who works in a McDonald’s, but Aicha is reluctant to see her and after many efforts Nadia manages only a brief glimpse at her sister from afar. When Nadia's addiction to prescriptions pills is exposed by Nathan, Sami decides that is time to return to Paris.
Cécile, who is cold and formal, has buried her youthful dreams, coping with life in a state of mild exasperation. Her marriage is less than blissful. Nathan, whose career has stalled, has had several affairs. Eventually Cécile, encouraged by Rachel, a friend and coworker, accepts Antoine's advances, initially proposing a brief fling, rather than his preference for them to grow old together. They make love and Antoine is closer to reaching his goal just when he was losing all hope. However, shortly thereafter, Antoine is involved in a serious accident, trapped in a collapse at the construction site where he works and is hospitalized with a coma. Cécile visits him constantly at the hospital.
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