The first French import of note this year, The Witnesses picks up at the onset of the AIDS epidemic in Paris around 1984. But, as it's directed by André Téchiné (Changing Times, 2004), this ensemble film could hardly be described as mere Sturm und Drang; rather, it unspools like a tangled skein of heavy, elaborate yarns. Through a haze of discos, countryside romps, and carefully appointed domestic tableaux, a loosely connected group of friends and lovers (Julie Depardieu and Emmanuelle Béart among them) wreak French havoc upon each other, unaware that the stakes have been forever ratcheted up by a plague still considered to be American nonsense