Set in the early 1980s when AIDS was still an unspoken acronym in polite society, The Witnesses almost has the feel of a glossy French soap opera. But since the director — and co-writer, along with Laurent Guyot and Vivianne Zingg — is romantic sensualist Andre Techine (Changing Times, Wild Reeds), this isn't Longtime Companion Redux or And the Band Played On ... and On. My only real quibble with The Witnesses is Techine's self-imposed date line. The chronology — 1984 to 1985 — seems odd considering that most educated people were a lot more savvy about AIDS transmission and treatment by the mid-'80s than any of the sophisticated Parisians in this film.

Certainly a successful novelist like Sarah (the ineffable Emmanuelle Beart, still as radiantly beautiful as when she played the lead in Manon of the Spring two decades ago) or an openly gay medical doctor like Adrien (Michel Blanc) would have been up-to-date on all of the (then known) facts about the disease. Their incredulous reaction when AIDS finally enters their lives — through a feckless party boy newly arrived from the provinces named Manu (Johan Libereau) — seems a tad far-fetched. But The Witnesses is a lot less literal-minded than any of the Gay Plague movies that stormed out of the closet in the wake of 1986 trailblazer Parting Glances. As usual, Techine is less concerned with the Big Picture than the thousands of tiny ones that comprise quotidian life. Sarah's bisexual policeman husband, Mehdi (Sami Bouajila), begins an affair with Manu that jeopardizes his marriage, his career and the lives of his wife and infant daughter.

Adrien, who's always been more of a mentor figure to Manu than a lover, becomes a sort of one-man Greek Chorus/audience surrogate as he observes all of this roiling human drama. Raging, heedless sensualist Sarah can't handle the responsibilities of motherhood. She's less annoyed by her husband's affair — maybe it's a French thing — than by the fact that she doesn't know how to "compete" with a man for Mehdi's affections. Despite the important theme and a plethora of interconnected subplots — Manu's aspiring opera-singer sister (the excellent Julie Depardieu) figures prominently in one of them — The Witnesses never feels schematic like a typical American "message" movie. Techine is more interested in exposing his characters' raw nerve ends than in making any sort of grand statement. The personal has always been political in Techine's films; and the personal always wins. — Milan Paurich

The Witnesses: 7 p.m. Friday, May 30 and 5:15 p.m. Saturday, May 31 at Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque, 11141 East Blvd., 216-421-7450.

The Fall

In 1001 Arabian Nights, Scheherazade tells stories hoping to save her life. In Tarsem Singh's The Fall, Hollywood stuntman Roy (Lee Pace) tells stories hoping to bring about his death. Roy tells his stories to Alexandria (Catinca Untaru), a little girl with a broken arm who speaks broken English and has a big imagination. Roy wants Alexandria to steal drugs for him so he can overdose, but even as he seeks to end his life, a genuine bond begins to form between the bitter stuntman and the little girl. That's the basic plot, anyway, and to be quite honest, it's probably the least interesting thing about The Fall. Anyone who saw director Singh's previous feature, The Cell, will have some idea of the visual treats on display here. Like a lot of movies these days, The Fall values style over substance. But where such mindless dreck as Speed Racer is content to be a candy-colored roller coaster ride designed to separate 12-year-old boys with ADHD from their parent's hard-earned cash, The Fall strives for art. Like a series of paintings come to life, this is a beautiful-looking film.

The problem is that all these amazing visuals are in the service of a mediocre script. In the hands of a less interesting director than Singh, there would be nothing special about this movie at all. Sure, Roy's story within a story pulls you in, but the majority of the credit for that goes to the striking visuals. The plot itself is standard-issue stuff, and the themes are about as deep as a Hallmark card. But damn, it looks good. I also have to give credit to the actors. Not only do Pace and Untaru do excellent work here in the leads, the supporting cast is strong as well. So I'm recommending The Fall, at least for more adventurous filmgoers who appreciate movies as a visual art form. — Robert Ignizio

Opens Friday at the Cedar Lee Theater, 2163 Lee Rd., Cleveland Heights, 440-564-2034, clevelandcinemas.com.

Flight of the Red Balloon

The first in a series of films commissioned by the Musee d'Orsay, Flight of the Red Balloon was loosely inspired by Albert Lamorisse's classic 1956 short, The Red Balloon. Directed by Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien (Flowers of Shanghai, Three Times) and starring arthouse icon/Oscar winner Juliette Binoche, Red Balloon finds Hou exploring favorite themes (including the alienation of modern urban life) in an unfamiliar setting (Paris) and language (French). Certainly anyone familiar with Hou's work will immediately recognize his graceful, fluid, almost Zen-like tracking shots. The change in location hasn't altered Hou's mise en scene a whit, or the sublimity of his achievement. Binoche — sporting a new bottle-blonde look — plays frazzled single mom Suzanne who lives in a cluttered, much too small apartment with her sad-eyed young son Simon (Simon Iteanu). A slightly less blowsy version of Gena Rowlands' hanging-by-a-thread housewife in John Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence, Suzanne haphazardly juggles her professional life (she's a puppeteer) with her maternal duties. To help ease the burden, she hires Chinese-born Song (Song Fang) to babysit Simon while she's at work. The two bond as a red balloon magically hovers over the City of Light, keeping an ever-watchful eye on them.

Like Song's student-film-within-a-film, Hou's movie "touches on deep things you think you'd forgotten." In this case, the lost innocence of childhood, a time when it was possible — if only in your dreams — to walk around a big city like Paris with a balloon in tow. Or the gnawing pain of splintered family threads. Simon has an absentee father and a teenage sister (glimpsed briefly in flashbacks) who lives in Brussels caring for Suzanne's elderly father. To the casual observer, Flight of the Red Balloon will probably seem like a film in which nothing much happens. Characters go about their daily lives without a whole lot of fuss or incident. Yet it's Hou's ever-rigorous accretion of stray details and serendipitous encounters that linger in the mind and soul. "Found" beauty has never been so heart-stoppingly gorgeous or sublimely moving. — MP

Opens Friday at the Cedar Lee Theater, 2163 Lee Rd., Cleveland Heights, 440-564-2034, clevelandcinemas.com.

My Brother is an Only Child

Set in a small Italian town in the '60s and '70s, Daniele Luchetti's My Brother Is an Only Child tells the story of two brothers who find themselves at odds over their political beliefs. You don't have to know much about Italian history (other than that the country was split in its support of dictator Benito Mussolini during World War II) to understand the drama at the center of this fine film. One brother, Manrico (Riccardo Scamarcio), is a charismatic speaker who becomes a leader of the Communist Party. He's constantly causing trouble and goes so far as to get hired at a factory just so he can get the workers to go on strike. The other, Accio (Elio Germano), is more studious. He'd rather be learning Latin grammar but he too gets involved in politics and joins the fascist party, almost in opposition to his brother.

The two not only argue over politics (and their exchanges are often violent), but also fall in love with the same woman (Diane Fleri), and that conflict really eats away at Accio. Often filming without any rehearsals, Luchetti achieves a spontaneous feel to the performances, and both Scamarcio and Germano are definitely up to the task. Scarmacio portrays the handsome Manrico perfectly, showing his fierceness and conviction. Germano makes Accio more temperamental and prone to making rash decisions. At the same time, his character is the more compassionate one because he doesn't put his politics above his family. When the two cross paths, like at a classical concert their sister invites them to, you can feel the tension simmering. Luchetti set out to make an homage to the early films of great Italian directors such as Bernardo Bertolucci and Marco Bellocchio, and the film, released to wide acclaim last year in Italy, certainly lives up to those aspirations. — Jeff Niesel

Opens Friday at the Cedar Lee Theater, 2163 Lee Rd., Cleveland Heights, 440-564-2034, clevelandcinemas.com.