Like Andre Techine’s current release, Changing Times, this 2001 feature by the French director is set in Tangier, and though it has a sharper sense of place, its story is less ambitious. A French trucker (Stephane Rideau) who drives between North Africa and western Europe takes a crack at drug smuggling, though most of the plot involves his intense but painfully undefined relationship with a North African Jewish woman (Lubna Azabal ) and his friendship with a former street acrobat (Mohammad Homaidi) who wants to sneak into Europe. There’s also some unfocused material about an actor-director (Gael Morel, playing some version of himself) and an American emigre whose lines are all drawn from the literature of Paul Bowles. Azabel, who plays twins in Changing Times, is wonderfully expressive. The title translates as Far. In English and subtitled Arabic, French, and Spanish. 120 min. (JR)