Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno (Abdellatif Kechiche, 2017) (Patreon)

"Indulgent" is not an adjective I throw around lightly. As a diehard defender of experimental film, I am all too aware that the world is filled with nitwits and know-nothings to gleefully lob that term at virtually anything that doesn't conform to a shopworn, Sid Field three-act narrative structure. And I'm a firm believer that an intellectually curious viewer should frequently be willing to meet an art object more than halfway.

But Mektoub, My Love: Canto One, a film that has already spawned a critically maligned sequel that's reputedly even more ambling and ass-obsessed, is a film that barely disguises its maker's desire to ogle hot young women and splash around in the warm waters off the coast of the south of France. It is three hours of the sun glinting off supple, scantily clad flesh, folks half the director's age bumping and grinding in clubs getting more and more handsy and inebriated, reportedly for real.

There's a skeletal story at work. Amin (Shaïn Boumédine), a fairly obvious stand-in for Kechiche, is a young man just back from a stint studying in Paris. He is an introverted artist, somewhat at a remove from the other members of his French-Tunisian family, especially the guys, who move through life with an aggressive macho swagger. He's hopelessly smitten with Ophélie (Ophélie Bau), a young woman who is having an affair with Amin's cousin Tony (Salim Kechiouche) while her fiancé is away serving in the Air Force. Amin meets two vacationing white chicks on the beach, Céline (Lou Luttiau) and Charlotte (Alexia Chartard), who are soon swept up in the aggressive sex, drinking, and party culture that Amin is a bit too sensitive to fully partake in.

As long and rambling as Canto One is, Kechiche would have to be utterly talentless not to capture some strong moments, and Kechiche does have an eye. The unwavering commitment to improv means that certain scenes actually coalesce. A bar scene in which Charlotte, who has been used and discarded by Tony, is marginalized by the revelers, is particularly effective, in part because it operates on a meta-level. She is a stand-in for the fuddy-duddies who refuse to get on Kechiche's wavelength and just go with the flow, expecting some sort of meaning or progression or significant human stakes. Another sequence on the beach, where the family matriarchs welcome Ophélie into conversation, only to shit-talk her afterwards, is a strong portrait of social relations and horizontal violence.

But most of Canto Uno is a non-stop leer at young women who are only understood from a male perspective. Even during an extended scene on Ophélie's family farm, the young woman is sexualized. She informs us that several of the sheep are about to give birth, and Kechiche's camera ogles her breasts and ass as she describes the ewe's "dilating vulvas." Towards the end of the film, during a seemingly endless club scene (that leads right into Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo), Ophélie and Céline make out like drunk straight girls while Amin gazes at them in the distance, with a combination of lust and disapproval. 

Seldom has a film wanted to camera-fuck its female performers with such blatant contempt, and one's awareness of the sexual harassment charges against Kechiche only makes the tedium that much more stomach-turning. This is a film made by incels, for incels.