Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno

This is a film that's hard to review; it is technically well done, but once in a while you wonder why you are watching what you're watching.

The film offers many ingredients of a good coming-of-age story: realistic characters, realistic character developments, realistic scenarios, realistic dialogues. Its perspective is not moralistic; It neither blames nor encourages any of its characters' different approaches to sex and life.

The problem, however, is that if you cut one hour of the movie out, it wouldn't lose any significance. Indeed, a lot of the film is plain gazing at the plump bodies of women, but the thing is that the gazed body parts do not add anything to the film. One could argue that the long sex scene in La Vie d'Adele gave the viewer an opportunity to get acquainted with the characters since the way a person has sex also tells a lot about them. The same argument sadly cannot be given in this film. Hence, you have a three hour long movie instead of two. Nonetheless, the longevity of the film does not mean that the film is stretched out. Three hours pass by in a relatively quick fashion (especially if you like women).

I just hope women and the animals in the movie did not have to endure shootings that they didn't particularly enjoy, considering Léa Seydoux's and Adele Exarchopoulos's harsh comments on the director at the time.

Hmmm so here we have a man called Abdellatif making a film in which Tunisians and French Arabs have a field day with the local lasses in Sète the hometown of Paul Valéry; and the local lasses cannot get enough ; kinda "She gotta have it" on the Med.

hmmm now I am well aware that there is a sequel already out titled Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo but and I have a suggestion for a third: hear me out ...

How about Jean-Pierre & Jean-Michel both of them cousins have a field day in Tunis; it could start with a steamy no-holds barred sex scene lasting over 6 minutes in which Noura rides Jean-Pierre in total abandon; the filmmaker making sure there is no corner of Noura we do not enjoy as a visual offering ... simply to match the opening scene of Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno

But even not being a qualified seer I do not think this film is in the pipeline. We wonder why. So this irks throughout the entire 3 hours and will carry on irking.

And for the aforementioned reasons I really wanted to dislike this film even hate it.

BUT I simply had to get over myself as Abdellatif Kechiche here shows himself to be capable of quasi-Rohmerian skills of storytelling ... so the characters are a bit vapid mostly middle-class students; drifting; the main character did a year of Medicine in Paris but is now back at mum's whiling away the summer ... so here we are within all the Rohmerian perimeters; folks vaguely in love with folks; indecision; air-headedness; open-endedness; looseness; detachment even; and Abdellatif Kechiche does all this very well indeed

He can be accused of voyeurism here and there is plenty of that; main actress Ophélie Bau has been named promising new actress; one could be concerned that with a gambit of that nature there is little she could now "artistically" offer the viewer of following flix but time will tell.

It is in the final analysis an ode to sensuality and the female form and ode to pleasure and The Med; it seems the director has a keen eye for the female form with a propensity to let the camera drift to the derriere of his acting ladies; so all cross-cultural shenanigans put aside it is quite a successful work ... see what you think ...

In fact Abdellatif Kechiche dreams of making a series. The length of his films is justified by his desire to make a documentary on the social engineering between these characters on the Mediterranean coast who spend their time talking to say nothing. Each scene is treated as a piece of bravura, as a montage sequence with a multitude of details and interactions between characters who have nothing to say to each other. That is to say, Kechiche's camera wants to be at the center of the people, at the center of their interactions, like a documentary, to reflect a reality, which is very positive here, and the film is extremely brilliant in terms of staging, or rather capturing the scenes. But each of these montage sequences would have been treated in a very different way by many filmmakers with multiple ellipses or not shown at all.

Moreover, Abdellatif Kechiche's other passion is to show women's bodies, especially their asses and breasts. It is not unpleasant, because the film is very naturalistic on this subject. It must be admitted that these characters are not exciting and that is the limit of the film. Stretching out these character interactions over 180 minutes would have been much better as a series in, say, twenty-minute modules, with each scene lasting twenty minutes; and the series format would add even more.

It's brilliant in terms of direction. But boring on the diegetic level. The evolutions of the main character touch us weakly.

Basically, lots of flesh. Scandalous, considering the action takes places in a muslim country, but the waves of visiting tourists makes flirt & nudity an everyday business. Amin's gaze is of an non-judgmental observer, reluctunt to engage. Love has little to do with the place, except for the lambs maybe - a cliche for innocence. Op-ending, the movie (hardly a story) lacks a morale; sometimes life is such.

Kechiche intuitively knows how to film bodies and the souls that drive them. It's an organic cinema, distilled in the most nostalic and melancholic barrel. We're all trapped on that beach, surrounded by love on a warm summer afternoon.

Always.