Tragedy of Aids beautifully told

Set in the early Eighties, he shows us a married couple, a young homosexual who has a sudden affair with the husband, and a gay consultant who nurses the boy through his fatal disease.

The great merit of The Witnesses is the way it makes the situation seem less improbable than this outline might suggest. We never know whether the married man, a French Arab played by Sami Bouajila, has had other homosexual affairs. We do know that he loves his Jewish wife (Emmanuelle Béart) and their baby and, despite the affair, will never leave them.

We know, too, that Michel Blanc's consultant is deeply in love with the infected boy (Johan Libéreau) but has accepted that there will be no physical relationship with him.

The boy himself, an apprentice cook, is too young to want to settle down with the older man and is conducting an affair with the husband which is hardly likely to stand the test of time. He is typical of the free spirits who suffered most from the onset of Aids. Yet none of the quartet seems like the human symbols of a terrible time when the pandemic first struck.

They simply face something they don't fully understand, with the consultant becoming determined to do what he can to make the young man's last days as comfortable as possible and to remember him by fighting his corner in the battle against public indifference.

The Witnesses is not the first French film about Aids, but, in its quiet way, it is one of the best. The consultant, beautifully played by Blanc, says that "heteros and fags should not be friends". But the young boy's illness brings the four together and the film ends on a cautiously optimistic note.

The Witnesses (Les Temoins)
Cert: 15