Much Loved

To be surrounded and yet be alone. To be loved and yet be invisible. To be cast away even as you are embraced. Welcome to the life of a Moroccan prostitute. From the testimonies of 200 real-life sex workers, Nabil Ayouch defied censorship to provide a fascinating, intimate and luminous glimpse into the Moroccan underworld. The story follows the fictional yet realistic lives of four women caught up in a passive- aggressive world. Bribing the police, projecting beautiful yet fabricated images and living on the edge of a knife, they turn to each other in order to live. It is beguiling to see the dark side of Morocco and witness these surreal lives that are lonely and solitary even as they are crowded with attention and "love." The acting is capable yet the story and characters could use just a little more depth. Seen at the Toronto International Film Festival 2015.

I thing I missed the point of the movie.. Ok so there are prostitutes in Morocco.. And as always they have it hard.. But they enjoy it.. or not? So the one joins.. she aborted and the other say sometimes its better to have no kids than be a bad mum... and everyone keeps giggling.. I don't know.. I could not really get a feeling for the characters... It was extremely chaotic and playing to much on the emotions..

"Much loved" was beyond my expectations, it felt so raw and authentic. I almost questioned if it was acting or not truly something you don't see every day. The movie sheds light on a subject that's very hard to grasp without making it shallow or glorified (which many other movies do). It shows the true paradox of a complex culture without really shedding bad light nor mocking it. The actors spoke more with their body language than with words and that made the move as exceptional as it is. You truly felt what they felt just by looking at their eyes. Lastly, by showing scenes that where truly hard to watch and no where near glorified made the characters truly come alive, they weren't shy - they where bright and filled with color.

"Much loved" is a real masterpiece and truly one of a kind.

Numbers of movies are made around the world on prostitutes and this one is not exceptional. Nude scenes are easily used in such movies in the name of creativity to get eye balls. If makers of such movies are truly sensitive to the subject they need to make it without vulgar dialogues and scenes.

This movie is about life of prostitutes in Morocco. Every fifteen minutes, someone f**ks someone. And there are some amazing things about it. The movie, by sheer means of visual storytelling, conveys how prostitutes can be loved, raped and abused, just like anyone else, even when all the three actions, on a physically level, are just sexual acts. You also get to see prostitution as just any job. You also see the challenges with this particular job - the boycott by family members and neighbours, feeling of loss of power with powerful clients / police etc. This movie offers a fine, realistic glimpse of the life of prostitutes in Morocco, portraying a very neutral look at their lives. You relate to them on many levels (good days at work, bad days at work, cracking jokes with friends, finding support and solace in friends in times of despair etc.).

Above are the things that I liked, but there are issues with the movie too. There are passages which feel either repetitive or longer than they need to be. As a feature length movie, it falters many a times in the 'pace' department. It just keeps randomly slowing down, now and then and that's some major turn off, for a movie that otherwise has so much visual stimuli to turn you on, quite literally.