Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno
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Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno
Netflix
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Amin, an aspiring screenwriter living in Paris, returns home for the summer, to a fishing village in the South of France. It is a time of reconnecting with his family and his childhood friends. Together with his cousin Tony and his best friend Ophélie, he spends his time between the Tunisian restaurant run by his parents, the local bars and the beaches frequented by girls on holiday. Enchanted by the many female characters who surround him, Amin remains in awe of these summer sirens while his dionysiac cousin throws himself into their carnal delights with euphoria. Armed with his camera and guided by the bright simmer light of the Mediterranean coast, Amin pursues his philosophical quest while gathering inspiration for his screenplays. When it comes to love, only Mektoub (‘destiny' in Arabic) can decide.
Like a long day at the beach, nothing at all happens, but the people watching is golden. _Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno_ is a voyeuristic cross between _Blue is the Warmest Color_ and _American Honey_, and I wrote that before learning the director of _Mektoub_ (Abdellatif Kechiche) is the same as Blue…
Why is this film 3 hours long? Because Kechiche doesn't know the meaning of the word ‘cut’. But this is just as well because if you cut this story, then it's only another day at the beach. If you make it longer, however, it becomes more real and that length gives it the gravitas it deserves.
What I don't understand, though, is this: this movie is 3 hours long and nothing happens in it, so how was I never bored? The best answer I can come up with was that I recognized everyone on the screen as, for the most part, being a part of me. There is someone for everyone in this poem to humanity.
Despite its length, the film doesn't take time but the director does, which gives him the space to display an intricate web of social connections as subtle as they fragile, and this web he weaves entraps the viewers before enveloping them.
_Mektoub_ is not for those who want to see something happen on the screen, it's for those who want to see **everything** happen on the screen.