Locarno premieres the sequel to the most cursed film in recent history, 'Mektoub, my love'

LocarnoWhy so much expectation before the world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival of Mektoub, my love: Canto dueA decade ago, Mektoub, my love It was to be the great project of Abdellatif Kechiche, then the French director with the greatest impact thanks to the success of Blue is the Warmest Color, Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. The filmmaker set out to adapt La blessure la vraie by François Bégaudeau (co-writer and star of another Palme d'Or, The class by Laurent Cantet), an autobiographical novel about a teenager's sexual awakening over the course of a summer in the 1980s. Kechiche moved the action to Seta in the 1990s and focused on a film student, Amin (Shain Boumédine), who returns from Paris to his hometown to enjoy a vacation with his gang. What was supposed to be a standalone film begins to look like a saga whose complexity frightens the producers. Lacking financing, Kechiche sells the Palme d'Or to finish the first installment. Soaked in the Occitan sun, shaken by the sensual hedonism of youth and with the salty taste of summers spent at the beach, Mektoub, my love: Canto one (2017) stands as a hymn to the Mediterranean as a way of understanding life and the experience of time.

But in the Song one does not follow him Canto due, but one Intermezzo which arrives at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. And the scandal breaks. The eroticism of the first film becomes an insistent objectification of the bodies of the lead actresses. The film seems to want to excuse its male gaze with a final, long sequence in which female pleasure takes center stage through explicit cunnilingus. At the festival and in the media, there is no other talk. Everything becomes complicated and Mektoub: Intermezzo It never gets released anywhere. Only those attending Cannes 2019 have seen one of the most talked-about titles in history, forever turned into a cursed film. But the sex scandal masked the real reasons why Mektoub: Intermezzo was out of circulation, linked above all to copyright on the ubiquitous music. A management error that also explains the problems Kechiche has with all his producers.

The bad shadow ofIntermezzo ends up affecting the third film in the saga, Mektoub, my love: Canto due, which, after its own trials and tribulations, was finally released at the 78th Locarno Film Festival. Abdellatif Kechiche's new film disappoints expectations of another controversial title or a new proposal of unbridled eroticism. Canto due It unfolds as the disenchanted conclusion of the previous two, a film about the twilight of summer and the acceptance of the end of the innocent euphoria it entails. The director introduces two new characters, an American producer and his young wife, a television actress, the embodiment of two archetypes, the capitalist tycoon and the femme fatale, which respectively adulterate the pure conception of art (they promise to boost Amin's career) and eroticism (here the seduction has tragic consequences). The American subplot not only disrupts the characters' destiny, it also takes over a large part of the film and distorts its general tone. The melancholic atmosphere is filled with a more strident register and a dramatic charge that shakes everything up.

Could the Swiss festival become the event that seals Abdellatif Kechiche's reconciliation with the world of cinema? The warm reception at the press session of Mektoub, my love: Canto due It seems like a clear invitation to give the person responsible for it a new opportunity. The dodge, who also suffered a bout of injury shortly before the festival. Kechiche is competing for the Golden Leopard in one of the strongest selections in recent years, with 18 titles from some of the most visionary filmmakers of our time, such as Radu Jude, Alexandre Koberidze, and Naomi Kawase. But, given the circumstances, the premiere of Canto due This is already great news.