Issue date: 3/3/08 Section: Arts & Culture

Media Credit: courtesy of brown.edu French actor, director and screenwriter Michel Blanc.

On Saturday afternoon, French actor, director and screenwriter Michel Blanc - the featured guest of the 11th annual Providence French Film Festival - entertained an audience with his lighthearted charisma in a nearly full Cable Car Cinema. The panel discussion followed screenings of two films starring Blanc, Isabelle Mergault's "You Are So Beautiful" and Andre Techine's "The Witnesses."

The theater was packed for the screening of "Witnesses," which tells the story of a group of free-thinking friends whose unconventional yet blissful lives are affected by the AIDS outbreak in 1984 Paris. Married couple Sarah and Medhi - played by Emmanuelle Beart and Sami Bouajila, respectively - are in an open relationship that is perhaps even spiced up by their extramarital affairs. As Medhi experiments with his sexuality, Sarah tries, often unsuccessfully, to love her newborn baby.

Meanwhile, their friend Adrien - an older gay doctor played by Blanc - takes handsome, young newcomer Manu, played by Johan Libereau, under his wing and falls in love with him. Adrien attempts to channel his passionate and sometimes self-destructive devotion to Manu, who is in love with another man, toward raising AIDS awareness in the Parisian community.

Divided into three parts, the film explores the before, during and after of the characters' battle with the virus as it suddenly infiltrates their circle and forces them to confront their tensions and mortality.

Because the question-and-answer session directly followed the screening of "Witnesses," the audience's mood was somber, but Blanc broke the tension with his answer to the first question. Now that he had acted, directed and written scripts, an audience member asked, "What next?"

"Dead," Blanc joked. "And I'm not the only one."

Blanc told the story of his rise to fame - he started out in a "cafe theater" comedy group called Le Splendide, which he explained is "something like standup." He then struggled to change his popular comic image and break into more serious roles, a 30-year process that he jokingly described as "very easy."

Blanc then answered a series of questions about "Witnesses." Techine had been telling him for about 10 years that he wanted to work with him, Blanc said, and finally, about two-and-a half-years ago, he approached Blanc with the script for "Witnesses," which Blanc described as "very touching, very clever, very deep."

Continued...

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