Synopsis
Amin, an aspiring screenwriter living in Paris, returns home for the summer, to a fishing village in the South of France. It is a time of reconnecting with his family and his childhood friends. Together with his cousin Tony and his best friend Ophélie, he spends his time between the Tunisian restaurant run by his parents, the local bars and the beaches frequented by girls on holiday. Enchanted by the many female characters who surround him, Amin remains in awe of these summer sirens while his dionysiac cousin throws himself into their carnal delights with euphoria. Armed with his camera and guided by the bright simmer light of the Mediterranean coast, Amin pursues his philosophical quest while gathering inspiration for his screenplays. When it comes to love, only Mektoub (‘destiny' in Arabic) can decide.
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Cast
- Shaïn BoumedineAmin
- Ophélie BauOphélie
- Salim KéchioucheTony
- Lou LuttiauCéline
- Alexia ChardardCharlotte
- Hafsia HerziCamélia
- Delinda KechicheAmin's mother
- Kamel SaadiKamel
- Hatika KaraouiTony's mother
- Meleinda ElasfourMel
Recommendations
- 80
The Guardian
It spends its time among unfeasibly beautiful young people in microscopically tiny swimming costumes, and moves with them in a trance of heightened physicality, drifting across beaches, bars and dancefloors. The mood is dreamy unseriousness qualified occasionally by temporary stabs of jealousy or misery. The sexiness isn’t promiscuous exactly; more directionless. - 70
Screen Daily
Kechiche has developed an almost unique ability to give surfaces depth through his manipulation of dramatic beats and a quality of empathy that seems built into the roving camera eye. - 67
The Playlist
Mektoub titillates without ever delivering the up-to-your-eyes immersion that the filmmaker’s best work deals in, and after three long hours, nobody’s changed, nobody’s learned anything and no one’s grown any older, except the audience. - 60
CineVue
Mektoub My Love is an often beguiling work, drenched in beauty and humour and an inclusive warmth. - 60
Variety
Another gorgeous three-hour study of young, attractively housed hearts in often turbulent motion, Mektoub is a frequently seductive sensory epic of equivalent ambition, yet despite its woozily pleasurable set pieces, the fraught emotions binding them are less urgent, and the perspective of its protagonist far less immediate. - 60
The Observer (UK)
Kechiche is quite brilliant at using stretches of time to create space for actors to let their characters breathe. It’s a sleight of hand that makes the intimacy on screen seem as though it’s unfolding organically, deployed to particularly dexterous effect in one sequence that takes place in a bar. - 60
Empire
It goes nowhere fast and Kechiche’s camera consistently ogles his female cast but he remains a terrific director of actors, the intimacy and authenticity conveying a real lust for life to sweeten the hefty running time. - 50
The Hollywood Reporter
Though it is convincingly played and sensually shot, the film has about as much narrative as the characters have parts of their bodies covered on the beach.
