Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno

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.

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.

I am surprised with the marks given by Imdb's users. Three years after seeing this film I still think about it, its music, its caracters, its mood accompany me. Mektoub My Love is a great movie, maybe not a masterpiece you would re-watch on an on but it's a great film, with a proper mood and a sensitive artistic touch. Among other things, it features a great sensuality and some brilliant actors (most of them are beginners and turn out to be really good especially Ophelie Bau who delivers a promising performance). Abdellatif Khechiche has this capacity to take the best out of his actors, he is also capable of captivating and bewitching his audience in a multi sensory journey. Khechiche does not make entertainment, it's not an action movie you should be looking for, it's a travel into his adolescence in the South of France, an ode to the youth, the non-endind summer and the awakening of desire. I think this film, a bit like "La graine et le mulet" which also took place in Sète (France), is very personal for the director. In fact, the heroe, Amin, looks like Abdelatif Khechiche himself (a young French man with arab origins who studies cinema...), the seaside resort he depicts really exists and you can't help thinking he's put some of his personal affairs in this story. What is interesting in Khechiche's cinema is how he shows the awakening of desire and the aesthetics chosen. I believe critics define it as naturalist cinema, a cinema that focuses on the flesh, the bodies, the lips sometimes even the driblle with an unmissable focus on the curves of women ; it's a cinema with a strong eroticization of the body but it's also a cinema that requires time, some scenes can be very long and Khechiche does it on purpose to insist on the desire felt, the games of seduction or to insist on the lenght of the night. Mektoub my love is a brilliant example of what Khechiche does best in that sense. Along with all that, the film features a social accuracy that gives a true insight to the film. It's not only about the birth of desire at the age of 20, it's also about a certain category of youth and summer loves. His cinema is always very realistic, you can feel the mood of a seaside resort, you understand its youth, its seduction games and you feel so comfortable that you would appreciate being part of the film actually. Like in "La vie d'Adèle", Khechiche goes very far into the eroticization of the bodies and the scenes at the beach (so beautiful...all of them), in the night club (slightly long I admitt) and the never ending approches between young adults reflect so well his cinema and the theme chosen : the birth of desire and sexuality at a young age. If you take your time (I think it's the key) and let you drift by Khechiche's poetry, you will certainly fall in love and enjoy being young (again) for the length of the movie.

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.

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 ...