blue caftan
Address: Mary Touzani
artists: Lubna Azabal, Saleh Bakri, Ayoub Missioui, Zakaria Atifi
Year: 2022
Premiere: 10 March 2023
★★★★
To reflect the complexity of sexuality and mortality, Moroccan Maryam Touzani’s second feature film exudes tenderness, melancholy and exquisite sensuality. The portrait of the love triangle, starring a tailor who secretly lives his homosexuality, his wife and the apprentice who comes to the traditional clothing store they run, is a film that is mostly expressed through glances and facial expressions. Wrapped in a hypnotic pace and charged atmosphere and conveyed by a sharp camera – when it doesn’t reinvent itself in extracting maximum expression from the artisanal scenes – it takes us into the interior of the characters, who are subject to constant scrutiny. opposite.
Leaning on the changing perspective of her sick wife, but paying attention to the conflict her husband is experiencing, Touzani accurately reveals the nuances and contradictions of a marital relationship that resists the dictates of desire and social pressure.and embodying a claim against tolerance and reaction. Touzani punctually lets the characters say too much—although coming from an Islamic country provides him with arguments for not being tactful—but resolutely avoids rhetoric and dramatically avoids over-emotional at the most intense moments. And the use he finds for the headdress is fascinating.