Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno réal. by Abdellatif Kechiche (review)

Kechiche returns to the artistic scene in what is for many audiences an anticipated follow-up to La vie d'Adèle. As in the 2013 film, Mektoub, My Love is laden with intense emotion. The opening scene, both graphic and pensive, transports the viewer to a locus of innocent—yet somehow complicated—amorous entanglements that unravel at varying levels of intensity throughout the film. Taking inspiration from François Bégaudeau's 2011 novel La blessure, la vraie, the film chronicles a number of relationships de passage in which one's destiny ("Mektoub") places into question the human condition at the north-south divide. Set in the southern French town of Sète in 1994, the film foreshadows what would increasingly become in French and Maghrebi cinema a preoccupation with the contemporary transnational exchange. The setting functions to remind us that although the film takes place in France, the geographical space more closely resembles North Africa as reflected in many of the "exotic" Tunisian-inspired locales. The juxtaposition of Maghrebi culture against the backdrop of the French-Mediterranean is anything but coincidental. The location provides the filmmaker with an opportunity to (re)examine transnational relations as they relate to the diversity of the region while indulging in the voyeuristic quality of his lens. The male gaze dominates throughout the film, yet challenges gender roles as they relate to the topoi of dominance and assertiveness. Indeed, the female character loses all innocence and exerts much time and energy being the dragueuse, as opposed to being preyed upon. The dominance of the female character, particularly as embodied by Charlotte, is further underscored through a close study of Amin, the studious, quiet, yet restless soul-seeker. An early scene that takes place on a local beach establishes the hypersexuality of Kechiche's French girl-tourists who, although provincial, are all-too-keen to capitalize on their seductive prowess. In this regard, the filmmaker in a way reverses previous constructs of Arab male dominance and subtly and effortlessly allows us to reconstruct the identity of the colonizing maître who reappears here as a seemingly innocent, yet confident young woman. Despite the long duration of the film (nearly three hours), the filmmaker's unique aesthetic is of particular value in the overall economy of the visual journey. The filming itself assumes an almost amateur-like quality, thereby further enabling us to participate in the journey of these complicated and fragile characters as we become invested in a plot that underscores a number of real-life scenarios and predicaments. As in Bégaudeau's novel from which Kechiche appears to find inspiration, the film is a study of the sexes, and it propels us to (re)consider how we negotiate(d) the meaning of desire in a society of contradictions.