Mehdi and Marie get to know each other after working together for several days. They are magnetic. She is sunny, he is shadowy. What was bound to happen arrives, the secret passionate love experienced by Mehdi. He has not told Marie, but he is promised to marry Selma. A pious, naive neighbor, who lives like him in the popular alleys of the city, far from the hills overlooking the sea.
Mehdi (Driss Ramdi) sees his life turned upside down by his meeting with Marie (Sara Giraudeau).
Pyramide Distribution
Neocolonialism
Mehdi sinks into deceit and into this double life, dividing his time between Marie and Selma, between the villa, a place of pleasure and worldliness, and the medina. Unaware of his lies, Marie’s parents, Clotilde (Carole Bouquet) and Bernard (Olivier Rabourdin), art-loving upper-class, 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, “at a friend’s place”.
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,” his mother, a teacher, tells him. The net tightens little by little. Mehdi loses ground, entangled in his duplicity, torn between two worlds. He deceives Marie, Selma, and himself. A will-o’-the-wisp heading to his downfall.
Meryem Benm’Barek creates discomfort, detects the hidden shadows in the vibrant light of Tangier.
The Moroccan filmmaker Meryem Benm’Barek, 41, signs a striking second feature film, both for its dramaturgy (will Mehdi be exposed?) and its sociological acuteness. She perfectly balances between psychological thriller and character study.
Behind the palm trees and the gentle sun of Tangier, there are, she tells us, underground but implacable, class relationships. The dominance of a French elite of tourists or “expats”, a blind neocolonialism to itself as it believes itself to be progressive. In their desire to help Mehdi “rise”, Marie and her parents do not realize how humiliating their approach can be. The young man is never treated equally to equals.
The Political and the Intimate
Meryem Benm’Barek creates discomfort, detects the hidden shadows in the vibrant light of Tangier, without Manichaeism. On the contrary, the story jostles us with malice. We should take sides with Mehdi. But this little Rastignac, weak and deceitful, is detestable. We should curse Marie and her mother, unbearable in their oblivious arrogance. Eventually, we discover vulnerability in one and a deep understanding of matters in the other.
We think of André Téchiné for the romantic, Joachim Lafosse for the sharp dissection of social relationships. Above all, we understand that we will have to reckon with Meryem Benm’Barek, and her art of skillfully weaving together politics and the intimate with sobriety and fluidity.
