Locarno Review: Mektoub, My Love: Canto Due Wraps Up Abdellatif Kechiche’s Captivating Series

      What is Mektoub, My Love about? Eight years after the release of the first film and following over eight hours of Abdellatif Kechiche's epic, it's still a relevant question. The latest installment, Canto Due, completes the trilogy with everything expected from the series: stunning young people, servings of couscous, dancing, lazy beach days, farm animals, and more. Surprisingly, the saga also has a coherent plot—with a beginning, middle, and end—but to describe the Mektoub films in such terms would be akin to explaining a river's flow through the pebbles on its banks. One thing is clear: Kechiche, perhaps more than many directors, excels at grasping two essential cinematic elements: that a lengthy close-up can constitute a movie on its own, and that no other medium captures the essence of hormones in motion quite like film.

      Canto Due offers all of that while also being––and this might disappoint some––the most understated part of the series. I make this assertion without having seen the infamous Intermezzo (a now-legendary film rumored to remain locked away in Pathé's vaults until funding can be secured to obtain the music rights), yet it seems fair to assume so. Canto Due includes a sex scene, but it occurs later in the film and has significant repercussions for those involved. It also lacks the whispers of impropriety that surrounded a similar scene in Canto Uno, which surfaced in less reputable parts of the Internet—not ones you would encounter linked in any review.

      The most controversial scene, reportedly lasting 13 minutes, is found in Intermezzo. It was included in the final cut without the consent of actress Ophélie Bau, leading to a dramatic walk-out during its premiere in Cannes. Such decisions have understandably caused some to distance themselves from the filmmaker; however, Bau notably is not one of them. She even attended the film's premiere and Q&A in Locarno, from which the director was absent due to a recent stroke. Given all of this, it's essential to proceed with caution, yet I find the entire situation irresistibly captivating—both the films themselves (with their startling blend of hedonistic excess and self-importance, including Dantean titles and Quranic quotes) and their tumultuous creation. There’s also the additional intrigue of an entry considered too risqué for public viewing (one that, in such a time of minimal cultural scarcity, I might prefer remain secured).

      But I digress. If you've seen Canto Uno, you'll recognize many familiar faces and have a good idea of what to anticipate. There's the introverted Amin (still a somewhat unremarkable protagonist, but portrayed with pleasant charm by Shaïn Boumedine), who has left medical school to venture into filmmaking and photography. His uncle Tony, still resembling a mix of a '70s matinee idol and Pier Paolo Pasolini, continues his promiscuous ways. Amin still harbors feelings for Ophélie (Bau), who is now expecting Tony's child after their long affair and is waiting for her soldier fiancé to return from abroad. The plot of Canto Due kicks off with the arrival of Jessica and Jack (played by Jessica Pennington and Andre Jacobs, respectively): Jessica, a freckled red-headed actress in the comically titled Embers of Passion, catches Tony's wandering eye, while Jack, her much older husband and a Hollywood producer, agrees to read Amin's sci-fi script as a favor after being invited to dine at the family couscous restaurant.

      It’s likely not lost on Kechiche that the daytime television melodrama reflected in that plot could easily fit into something called “Embers of Passion.” Much of what the director has released since Blue Is the Warmest Color seems to serve as a preemptive response to critical backlash. Many reviews from around the time of Canto Uno’s release noted this tendency, suggesting that Kechiche was doubling down on accusations of misogyny that he believed may have influenced the Cannes jury’s unprecedented choice to award the Palme d'Or to him and his two lead actresses, the then-unknown Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos, both of whom have since somewhat backtracked on those claims. If this is indeed the case—and given that Kechiche allegedly sold his Palme to finance the first of these films, I am inclined to believe so—can we suggest that Intermezzo represented an attempt by the director to further assert himself following Canto Uno's favorable reception from more mainstream critics? Or that Canto Due, being the most conventional of the three, was his way of defying expectations once more? It's a plausible theory.

      The film premiered in Locarno to a full audience, many of whom seemed well aware of what to expect: laughter in all the right spots (though accompanied by some less-convincing line deliveries from American actors) and a noticeable excitement