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.

It could be an hour instead of a 3 hours movie it spend half an hour to show a sheep born or 20 minutes to watch people dance in a bar.the movie trying hard to show all the girls like Amin. The lovely boy that I think he wasn't as lovely as what they think.

'Mektoub my love Canto Uno' has devided professional critics.

It is easy to denounce its lack of former plot line, length (3hrs) and voyeurism. Although these accusations are valid, who let himself completely immerse into it will feel undoubtedly rewarded.

It is not a boring film and quite captivating actually. I was even craving for more..

The action takes place in Sète, a southern France resort town on the Mediterranean. Amin, a shy student of Tunisian background who came back to his home town for summer, hangs out with friends and girls on holidays. Bodies and characters faces are shot with the delightful summer light which gives an extra touch of sensuality to the whole story.

The film shows like no other movie before it what it really feels to be young, beautiful and on holidays. The camera is so close from the group that the viewer feels actually part of the band.

It can work as a time machine (for the ones who have enjoyed similar experiences) or better as a machine that sucks you into the present, a call that is so powerful that one can hardly get out of it unharmed.

Kechiche's tour de force is to create a fiction that feels so real it could be a documentary on sociability, family, seduction and love at 20 something.

For the viewer who has let go and enjoyed this piece of cinema at his true value it is hard not to regard 'Mektoub my love' as an original, authentic, peculiar masterpiece.

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 ...

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.