André Téchiné's Les Temps qui changent | Times Change (2004)

Antoine (Gérard Depardieu) is a French civil engineer who has contrived to work on buildings in Tangiers because – although he's had other women in the last 'thirty-one years, eight months and twenty days' since his relationship with Cécile (Catherine Deneuve) – he still loves her. She's married to Moroccan doctor Nathan (Gilbert Melki), and works at a radio station in Tangiers.

After many years, Antoine has traced Cécile. He first sees her with Nathan at a supermarket, where he runs into a plate glass wall on making his exit, injuring his nose. Nathan attends to the wound.

Cécile's marriage is far from happy and eventually she gets back with Antoine, who unfortunately has a serious accident at work and is in a coma. Cécile and Nathan part, and he goes to a new job in Casablanca. When Antoine comes out of his coma his frequent visitor Cécile holds his hand.

(The bisexual interest in the film is in Cécile and Nathan's son Sami (Malik Zidi), who lives with Nadia (Lubna Azabal) in Paris but the two go for a visit to Morocco and Sami recommences his relationship with his former boyfriend Bilal (Nadem Rachati).)

André Téchiné's Les Innocents (1987)

Jeanne (Sandrine Bonnaire) is from northern france and goes to Toulon for the wedding of her sister Maïté (Christine Paolini) to Noureddine (Krimo Bouguetof), although her main intention is to meet her deaf-mute brother Alain (Stéphane Onfroy). She meets Klotz (Jean-Claude Brialy), a bisexual orchestra leader with alcoholic tendencies and a lust for the young Saïd. Jeanne discovers that Alain has become a petty thief along with Saïd (an early appearance of Abdelatif Kechiche before he became the famous director). She spends the night with her brother but he robs her in the early hours, even of a precious family heirloom.

Jeanne goes to see Klotz to find out where her brother is, but meets his son Stéphane (the lamented Simon de La Brosse, who killed himself at thirty-two), who has only recently come out of a coma so can behave a little oddly at times. Jeanne and Stéphane are attracted to each other and he takes her to see Klotz rehearsing. Alain is staying with Saïd, to whom Jeanne is also attracted. All this is played out against the background of Stéphane's extremely violent, extreme right-wing history, and in the end both Saïd and Stéphane are shot dead, lying next to each other as Jeanne stares at them.

There's an air of Greek tragedy about this film.

André Téchiné's La Fille du RER | The Girl on the Train (1986)

This film was inspired by Jean-Marie Besset's play RER, which in turn was inspired by a true event in 2004 in Paris when a young woman went to the police to register an anti-Semitic attack on her on the D line of the RER. It provoked a wave of protest in the country, with a great deal of media interest. A few days later she admitted that she'd invented the story.

Jeanne (Émilie Dequenne) is rollerblading and attracts the attention of Franck (Nicolas Duvauchelle), who's doing the same. And he's pretty insistant on getting to know her. Jeanne is unemployed and lives modestly with her mother Louise (Catherine Denueve) who looks after children as a livelihood. When Franck finds a job the young couple live together, until Franck is severely wounded by a knife blow over a drug deal. It's then that Jeanne's life begins to crumble, along with her mind. I would hardly think that this film has anything to do with racism, more the fragility of psychology, especially in the younger generation.

André Téchiné's Les Égarés | Strayed (2003)

It's June 1940 and people are fleeing from Paris. German aircraft bomb them, and the family or interest here loses its car and its possessions: widow Odile (Emmanuelle Béart) and her children, thirteen-year-old Philippe (Grégoire Leprince-Ringuet) and seven-year-old Cathy (Clémence Meyer). Retreating from the road they reluctantly meet the strange seventeen-year-old Yvan (Gaspard Ulliel), who has cropped hair to ward off lice, and has a generally wild and disturbed appearance. But they put their trust in him and escape into the woods.

They come upon a large abandoned house which Yvan knows of – later discovered left by a Jewish family – and although Odile is reluctant to enter property that is not her own she is to learn that people act differently in times of war: the survival instinct comes to the fore, conventional laws are overturned. For a time then this becomes their home and they live in a style to which they're unaccustomed, admidst lush furniture with fine wine.

The family's wariness of Yvan soon lessons and he becomes a kind of older brother or father figure to the children, receiving Philippe's great admiration in particular. He steals from dead soldiers and sets traps for rabbits, fishes and provides for the family, even managing a kind of bemused respect from Odile when he tells her he'd like to marry her. A former teacher, Odile begins to teach the illiterate Yvan how to read and write. He also has a violent streak and is suspicious of any outsiders, being particularly mindful for the safety of Odile.

There's a blossoming of strong physical attraction between Odile and Yvan which climaxes in anal sex, and – after the short family idyll is ended by the police when they catch Yvan stealing and he's sent to a reformatory and Odile and children join the refugees – the mother struggles with her grief when she learns that Yvan has hanged himself but tells Philippe he's escaped.

Loss, emotional and physical turmoil, grief, hiding, lies, brief and improbable friendships and liaisons, such is the nature of France under Nazi occupation, which brings out the best and the worst of humanity.