Over several days, Mehdi and Marie get to know each other. They are magnetic. She is radiant, he is gloomy. As expected, a passionate love affair ensues, experienced in secret by Mehdi. He hasn’t told Marie, but he is promised to marry Selma. A neighbor, pious and naive, who lives like him in the popular alleys of the city, far from the hills overlooking the sea.
Neo-colonialism
Mehdi becomes entangled in deceit and in this double life, dividing his time between Marie and Selma, between the villa, a place of pleasure and mundanity, and the medina. Ignorant of his lies, Marie’s parents, Clotilde (Carole Bouquet) and Bernard (Olivier Rabourdin), passionate art bourgeois, take him under their wing. Their care is not without condescension. Mehdi dreams of becoming an architect? No problem, they will find him an internship in Paris, “with a friend”.
The young man hides all this from his parents, who prefer humility to ambition. “I am proud of you if God is proud of you,” said his mother, a teacher. The noose tightens little by little. Mehdi loses ground, stuck in his duplicity, torn between two worlds. He cheats with Marie, with Selma, with himself. A will-o’-the-wisp heading for his downfall.
Meryem Benm’Barek creates discomfort, detects the hidden shadows in the vibrant light of Tangier.
Moroccan filmmaker Meryem Benm’Barek, 41, delivers a poignant second feature film, both for its dramaturgy (will Mehdi be exposed?) and for its sociological acuity. She perfectly balances between psychological thriller and study of characters.
Behind the palm trees, and the gentle sun of Tangier, there are, as she tells us, hidden yet implacable underground class relations. The domination of a French elite of tourists or “expats”, a blind neo-colonialism, as it believes itself to be progressive. In their desire to “elevate” Mehdi, Marie and her parents do not realize how humiliating their approach can be. The young man is never treated equally.
The political and the intimate
Meryem Benm’Barek creates discomfort, detects the hidden shadows in the vibrant light of Tangier, without Manicheanism. On the contrary, the story playfully challenges us. We should root for Mehdi. But this weak and deceitful little Rastignac is detestable. We should curse Marie and her mother, unbearable in their oblivious arrogance. In the end, we discover in one a fragility, in the other a fine understanding of matters.
One thinks of André Téchiné for the romanticism, of Joachim Lafosse for the sharp dissection of social relationships. Above all, we realize that Meryem Benm’Barek, with her art of weaving together the political and the intimate with sobriety and fluidity, is someone to watch out for.
