To make a movie truly moving, there has to be a genuine quality to a story that is unforced and preferably understated. Maryam Touzani’s second feature, The Blue Caftan (Le bleu du caftan), takes its time establishing its place – a very old, conservative and self-contained medina in a Moroccan city – and its characters, master tailor Halim (Saleh Bakri) and his wife Mina (Lubna Azabal), who have a shop where Halim painstakingly sews exquisite hand-embroidered caftans for discerning customers. With the same patience and respect for detail, Touzani gradually acquaints the viewer with the couple’s very special relationship, where love and sexuality cannot converge, but can co-exist. Because the unspoken truth, the elephant in the bedroom, is that Halim is gay, a fact he is forced to hide in a country that criminalizes homosexuality.
Far from a manifesto for gay rights, The Blue Caftan is a love story fraught with obstacles but still triumphant in its magnificent ending that affirms the complexity of human feelings. Like the Moroccan director’s first film Adam, which also starred Azabal as a severe woman who grudging takes in a pregnant girl from the country, the story turns on the characters’ empathy for one another and their willingness to trespass society’s ironclad laws for a fellow human being.
Touzani’s screenplay, which she wrote with producer Nabil Ayouch (the director of last year’s much-liked Casablanca Beats), opens in an old shop with its thick stucco walls and bolts of silk and velvet cloth. Mina and Halim are trying out a new apprentice, Youssef (Ayoub Missioui), in the hope that he will help them fill back orders for their impatient customers. Each hand-sewn caftan is a work of art requiring many weeks of work, produced by twirling fine gold threads into embroidery twine and carefully reproducing traditional designs with needle and thread.
Youssef is a handsome young man and a talented pupil, ready to work long hours to learn (it is hinted) a dying craft. His sensitivity matches Halim’s, and Mina senses the electricity between them. It makes her jealous and spiteful towards the boy. To spare her feelings and avoid bringing shame on her, the quiet, introverted Halim doesn’t let his attraction to the apprentice go any further. Instead, he seeks relief with anonymous partners in the hammam where he goes – frequently – to wash.
Yet despite guilt over his sexuality, Halim is very much attached to Mina, who can be sharp-tongued and severe, but offers him the protection of a mother figure. Their roles change radically when she becomes ill and he has to care for her, which he does with evident love and self-sacrifice. In one scene extraordinary for the way it conveys their shy intimacy, he helps her undress and touches the place where one of her breasts is missing. When she calls him the most pure and noble man she has ever known, it is a moment of aching revelation in their relationship.
Palestinian stage and film actor Saleh Bakri (The Band’s Visit, Salt of This Sea, The Time That Remains) is excellent in the unassuming role of the husband, and has as great a screen presence as top Moroccan actress Lubna Azabal. The two work beautifully together, each complementing the other. As the third side of the triangle, newcomer Ayoub Missioui offers a torrid but sensitive alternative to Halim for a different life.
Technical work on the film is joyfully sensual and tactile, not limited to the touch of cloth between the fingers or painful callouses caused by thread running over a palm, but encompassing the delights of the smell of tangerines and unwashed bodies, color and light. Lensed by DP Virginie Surdej with great pictorial sensitivity (she also did standout cinematography on Adam), the film’s style emulates the artistry of Halim’s craftsmanship. Surdej’s overhead lighting picks out a tabletop, chairs and a domino-patterned floor in a framed interior scene reminiscent of a Vermeer painting. The distinguished musical score is contributed by Danish composer Kristian Eidnes Andersen, who worked with Lars Von Trier on Antichrist.
Director: Maryam Touzani
Screenplay: Maryam Touzani with Nabil Ayouch
Cast: Lubna Azabal, Saleh Bakri, Ayoub Missioui
Producer: Nabil Ayouch
Co-producers: Amine Benjelloun, Sebastien Schelenz, Mikkel Jersin, Eva Jakobson, Katrin Pors
Cinematography: Virginie Surdej
Editing: Nicolas Rumpl
Production design: Emmanuel De Meulemeester, Rachid El Youssfi
Costume design: Rafika Benmaimoun
Music: Kristian Eidnes Andersen
Sound: Nassim El Mounabbih
Production companies: Les film du nouveau monde, Ali n’ Productions, Velvet Films, Snowglobe
World Sales: Films Boutique
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard)
In Arabic
122 minutes
