«Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno»5 reading minutes

Cinema Wednesdays - Loris S. Musumeci

«You pose like an uncomfortable chick.»

Amin (Shaïn Boumedine) returns to Sète for the vacations. There he meets up with his family, friends and the southern atmosphere of the seaside town. The young man has abandoned his medical studies in Paris. He wanted to devote himself to photography and cinema, for which he was preparing a screenplay. Passionate by nature and with a tender gaze, he is eager to discover the world, life and the senses. Always observant, always innocent, he stumbles upon a torrid union between his cousin Toni (Salim Kechiouche) and Ophélie (Ophélie Bau), a childhood friend and sumptuous shepherd's daughter. Amin can't help looking out the window: the pleasure is too great, but so is his shyness and confusion.

With his flirtatious cousin, he sets off in search of freshness on the beach. The two young men make friends with two women from Nice on vacation. Toni has just seduced Charlotte (Alexia Chardard). Amin seems to be slowly falling for Céline (Lou Luttiau). But love is frivolous, and seduction is just around the corner. Couples are made, unmade, confused; and handsome Amin keeps his distance, in love with one or the other, in love with bodies in the sun, in love with wet skin, in love with laughter and games in the water.

Recognizing abuses and shortcomings

In principle, with a director like Abdellatif Kechiche, you either love him or you hate him. But there's nothing to stop you from succumbing to the film's undeniable charm, while acknowledging its abuses and shortcomings. The Tunisian director's camera moves from artistic voyeurism to an indecent gaze on the ravishing curves of the female figure. In the script, the little everyday words and expressions also have their limits. Integrated into extremely long scenes, they can sometimes lead to boredom, or even an unpleasant feeling of complacency on the part of the director towards his own work. This is where Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno. The rest is poetry.

«Violent childhood, adolescent reveries in the hum of the bus, mornings, fresh girls, beaches, young muscles always at the peak of their effort, the slight anguish of the evening in a sixteen-year-old heart, the desire to live, glory, and always the same sky throughout the years, inexhaustible with strength and light, insatiable itself, devouring one by one, for months on end, the victims offered as crosses on the beach, at the funeral hour of midday.» Kechiche films what Camus wrote in Summertime.

Camusian scenes

The scenes on the beach are magnificent, Camusian. Bodies glistening with water droplets gleam under the powerful white sun. The girls' bellies sing of the suppleness of youth; the boys', of the strength of nature. They laugh, play, caress and attract each other. The image accompanies the ball of beauty with a clear, opaque filter that makes the shots more vivid. In the evening, the light turns orange. It extinguishes the matte skins and lights up the short garments with fabrics that contrast with the flesh, highlighting it.

The girls' embarrassed but greedy smiles call the boys to instinctive rapprochement. They approach them, offering a drink, then a dance. The girls touch each other's hair; the boys, in response, put their hands on their hips, then their fingers on their cheeks. The line between friendship and love is shaky. Particularly for Amin, more handsome than all the others, but more reserved too. He's seduced, and wants to seduce too, but excess blocks him. He's looking for a love that's too big for vacation romances, bodies too eternal to offer themselves from arm to arm, friends too pure to penetrate their innermost selves.

The quest for love that will come

The complexity of the character is overwhelming, even dizzying. At the same time, the viewer is reassured by the young artist's «hi, how are you?» and «yeah, cool» exchanges with Ophelia, Céline, Charlotte and other encounters, but anxious that he'll let the train pass him by, motionless. In his relationship with his mother, Amin offers the screen the most beautiful of relationships. The gentleness is gratuitous, the kindness in full swing, the complicity unsurpassed. Only she truly understands her son. This is evident in shots where the two protagonists, situated at a much greater distance than other exchanges, capture each other directly in a glance.

The camera delivers even more richness in scenes of a completely different context. In addition to the overly fixed shots of the buttocks, Kechiche films the faces, always accompanied by part of the torso, in short, slow movements reminiscent of the rhythm of the waves. The landscapes are equally moving. At Ophélie's farm, the stones are rough and dry. The sunlight plays on the twilight to dress them in resplendent variations. In this farmhouse always, Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno reaches its climax with the birth of a ewe. The grain of the image is thicker; night has fallen. The ewe licks her lamb. The desire to live is there, in its primitive stage, already preparing the quest for love to come.

«We're all grown up now.»

Write to the author: loris.musumeci@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © Pathé Films