ANDRE Techine has always struck me as a profoundly spurious director, whose films were vapid and vague, pretentious and hollow, their texture threadbare, their craft rudimentary. Last year, his Wild Reeds won the Oscar for best foreign film, and though it was better than usual for him, it was still far from compelling. The year before (1993), he directed and co-wrote Ma Saison Preferee, and this strikes me as a major achievement. I do wish, however, that the French title had not been ...