Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno

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 ...