Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno & Intermezzo (Abdellatif Kechiche, 2017/2019)

[dda1996a]

Which begs the question, as much as teenage me enjoyed seeing her for a few shots, I did find it kinda gross after a while even back then and it had no reason or merit.
Unless you're talking about how no one criticizes Bay (which I think many did, but not vehemently like this) like they do Kechiche, which is a fair point. But also Bay does acknowledge who he makes his films to, and that was way back before #metoo

[tenia]

My remark was actually very neutral. I struggled to find an example that would probably speak to enough persons, and that's the one I found.

It's then up to everyone to see if this way of filming women is too exploitative or not. I think it is, and I don't think it means I'm a Victorian puritan, but that's just me, and hopefully it's an example people can picture well enough to imagine the kind of filmmaking we're talking about with Canto Uno and most likely even more so with Intermezzo.

I dont recall precisely how Transformers was discussed about this specific point but I seem to remember it did get quite some flack.

[Shrew]

Is the question whether Kechiche has crossed the Tinto Brass (waist)line?

[knives]

Frankly I'd take Brass over a lot of the more respectable filmmakers.

[RitrovataBlue]

Okay, so this is my first ever comment here (I’m a longtime lurker), and I have seen neither volume (ahem... “Canto”) of Mektoub, My Love; however, I have seen both The Secret of the Grain and Blue Is the Warmest Color, and I think I have something to offer in this discussion. First, let me say that I am by no means a prude. If anything, I’m rather the opposite; both myself and my partner have been naked on the internet (and in a sexual/pornographic context), and have been to nude beaches, and I have even been to a nudist resort. I’m also a firm believer in the principle of unvarnished realism in the depiction of sex on film, having long argued that sex scenes in “realist” cinema ought to be unsimulated or at least extremely realistic whenever possible. Realistic and, especially, real sex has a tendency to draw the viewer closer to the characters/performers on screen. By being taken out of our comfort zones/expectations as viewers, we experience a sense of shared vulnerability with the performers, and can even get carried along (yes, in some cases turned on) with the escalating emotion/feeling of the scene. Very little can make sex on screen as cathartic - and, therefore, as emotionally honest - as realism. That said, I found the sex scenes in Blue Is the Warmest to be pornographic in the worst (re: least honest) way possible.

In Blue, Kekiche relies on intense facial close-ups (shot in handheld/shaky cam style) for nearly the entire duration of the film. The lighting is natural; the framing is incidental. It’s like The Passion of Joan of Arc if Dreyer were uninterested in composition... Except during its sex scenes. The first big tell that Kekiche is interested in something more (or, perhaps, less) than his actresses’ faces is the masturbation scene about an hour into the film. Suddenly, the camera is much less interested in Adele’s face than in her hands, the lighting assumes a lurid tone, and we’re watching a brief interlude (“Intermezzo”?) of softcore porn. The much-discussed sex scenes are even more aesthetically removed from the rest of the film. Not only is the light suddenly painted with a golden airbrush, but this film of faces becomes a film of bodies - or rather, body parts, filmed in long close-ups alternating with the kind of establishing shots that one only assumes Kekiche was too bored to bother with when his actresses were clothed. The sex scenes are aesthetically distinct from the rest of the film, so much so that they seem beamed in from some long lost Playboy Channel video, fully remastered in high definition. They feel about as genuine as a blow up doll.

I complained about all this on Facebook some five years ago, only to encounter the persistent rebuttal that Kekiche shot the sex scenes so differently from the rest of the film not in order to capture the great jack off opus in his imagination, but to put the viewer in the characters’ exalted state of mind during their mind-blowing sex. The people arguing this didn’t cite The Secret of the Grain, but it provides some support for this reading in its climactic belly dance scene. The belly dance in The Secret of the Grain is outrageous - Kekiche’s camera lingers on his star’s midsection for something like ten minutes, though here it is at least cross-cut with other action. Yet this scene feels entirely justified, because its duration and arguably leering focus on a female body are entirely necessary to communicate the character’s heightened state of mind. In fact, I saw The Secret of the Grain some time before Blue Is the Warmest Color, and didn’t register this scene as potentially exploitative until after seeing the latter film. Perhaps Kekiche really was directing in good faith in both instances, trying to capture a fevered state of mind by fixing his gaze on bare female flesh, and it is merely a coincidence of his experience that to him sexual exaltation looks an awful lot like late-night Cinemax circa the late 90s. And perhaps he’s trying to get at something similar in Mektoub, to capture the sensual exhilaration of club dancing using a medium of human bodies... but I doubt it. After all, people of all gender identities and body types may experience such thrills, but Kekiche has, per all reports, chosen again to fix his gaze on an especially narrow spectrum of bodies and, indeed, of body parts.

Asses, especially young, female asses, whether at rest or in motion, whether climbing stairs or twerking, are among the most commonly photographed objects in this world. If one wishes to watch shaking female asses for three and a half hours, one only has to queue up one’s preferred Pornhub search term, or Reddit community, or whatever other porno vector one chooses, because there’s an Empire’s worth of ass uploaded to the internet every single day. But Kekiche was not content to sit idly by while the world shook its asses all around him; no, he would boldly stride onto the beaches and into the clubs where those asses were shaking and he would document them for posterity. He didn’t care that the world had had its ass and eaten it too; he would shove his asses in the faces of all the world’s most discerning filmgoers and then, then they would finally see the face of god shining forth from betwixt cloven cheeks. At least, that’s what he told himself while he jerked off.

There are major problems with the pornographic video industry - with predatory individuals; with systemic disregard for consent; with simple monetary exploitation. These problems are not endemic, but they are widespread, and it is telling that the women in Kekiche’s films report at least the first of these two problems. Foisting one’s pornographic fantasies onto obnoxious film critics is one thing; actually exploiting people is another. There is a place for pornographic content in cinema, though I don’t want to get into the fine details of what I consider appropriate contexts for and forms of such content here. But there should be no place in cinema, either mainstream or otherwise, for exploitation.

[furbicide]

My remark was actually very neutral. I struggled to find an example that would probably speak to enough persons, and that's the one I found.

It's then up to everyone to see if this way of filming women is too exploitative or not. I think it is, and I don't think it means I'm a Victorian puritan, but that's just me, and hopefully it's an example people can picture well enough to imagine the kind of filmmaking we're talking about with Canto Uno and most likely even more so with Intermezzo.

I dont recall precisely how Transformers was discussed about this specific point but I seem to remember it did get quite some flack.

If you think “this way of filming women” (i.e. one that sexualises, fetishises or “objectifies” body parts) is inherently exploitative, then you’d probably have to conclude that all porn actors are exploited – and as someone who has friends who work in the feminist/queer/alternative porn industry, I’ve long understood such assumptions to be totally incorrect, and that they can have the effect of patronisingly ignoring female agency. (This is not to say that exploitation doesn’t exist in some places in the porn or mainstream film industry, as RitrovataBlue describes above; of course it does.)

Exploitation is a topic we should take extremely ethically seriously, but it’s also a word that shouldn’t be used lightly. Perhaps this is just a reflection of my more postmodernist/sex-positive thinking on these things, but I’d wager that it’d be near-impossible to tell simply from watching a film whether an actor has been exploited, because you don’t know what they’ve signed up for or how willing they were; you’d have to instead have some idea about the conditions of production and/or have access to testimony of actors suggesting that something coercive or manipulative has taken place to make that conclusion. That might be the case with the Mektoub films, and if so that must be addressed, but it’s not something I’d be about to assume simply on account of the way he films women’s bottoms.

Edit: I wrote most of this before having the chance to read RitrovataBlue’s post above (welcome to the forum, by the way!) I think you make some compelling points and I think what you say in the last paragraph is fundamentally true. But I would like to tease out some questions raised by your (interesting and well-argued) post.

You point out, as Mark Cousins did in his perceptive review of BITWC for Sight & Sound, that the framing of the sex scenes is something of a betrayal of the film’s broader aesthetic, but that’s wholly a critique of artistry – it doesn’t tell us anything about consent, or exploitation, and it doesn’t tell us why he shouldn’t have included overtly “pornographic” interludes like them. You deride them as ‘90s Skinemax stuff, but maybe that’s the precise aesthetic he was going for; maybe he wanted to film images that he, as a filmmaker, found erotic.

It’s so important to step away from culturally imposed paradigms (that we all probably subconsciously carry) that erotic intent is “low”, or dirty, or contrary to artistic aims, and while I respect that you’re taking an explicitly sex-positive and anti-censorship view here, there is a hint of those paradigms in your suggestions that real sex should only be filmed in certain ways. And I think your fourth paragraph is particularly restrictive in that regard: why do you talk about “jacking off” as if it’s something so dirty and shameful? Isn’t “there are plenty of asses on pornhub” just another restatement of the art/porn divide? And aren’t you being a bit overly presumptuous about his motivations?

[tenia]

If you think “this way of filming women” (i.e. one that sexualises, fetishises or “objectifies” body parts) is inherently exploitative, then you’d probably have to conclude that all porn actors are exploited – and as someone who has friends who work in the feminist/queer/alternative porn industry, I’ve long understood such assumptions to be totally incorrect, and that they can have the effect of patronisingly ignoring female agency. (This is not to say that exploitation doesn’t exist in some places in the porn or mainstream film industry, as RitrovataBlue describes above; of course it does.)

I actually don't think so and think about this on a case by case way. In the case of Canto Uno, and seemingly Intermezzo, RitrovataBlue's remarks about the work of Kechiche on Blue seem like they could very well apply there.

[Mr Sausage]

Probably a good idea for posters to be clear about how they're using 'exploitative', ie. are they saying the actors are being exploited, or certain subject matter is being exploited as in an exploitation film.

[tenia]

Though I meant the 2nd option, the good thing with Kechiche is that it's actually kinda both.
EDIT : And indeed, following the controversy around Blue's shooting conditions, it looks it wasn't better on Intermezzo, especially for the oral sex scene shooting.

[Mr Sausage]

What are the reports on the shooting conditions of Intermezzo?

[tenia]

What are the reports on the shooting conditions of Intermezzo?

I only have it in French :


Quick translation :

The movie's raciest scenes, shot at the Dune nightclub, have been captured in a heavy and tense atmosphere, according to a witness of the shooting.
"The director had the actors play for hours and hours the nightclub scenes, exhausting them, and the shooting lasted until very late at night. Kechiche absolutely wanted a non simulated sex scene, something the actors didn't want to do. But by the way of insistance, and over time and with alcohol being recurringly consumed, he managed to get what he wanted."
According to this witness, this uneased the shooting team who witnessed this pressures coming from the director.

Remember that the 2 actors are a real-life couple, and that the oral sex scene is non-simulated and without any prosthesis (unlike Blue's sex scenes between Seydoux and Exarchopoulos.
When you add this and the rumour that Bau left the screening and didn't attend the press conference because Kechiche didn't tell her how this scene would be included in the movie (ie, I guess, how explicitly it would be on-screen), it doesn't paint Kechiche in a very good light, especially after similar controversy on Blue, and even if one takes all this with a pinch of salt.

[furbicide]

I agree that these are concerning reports, if true, and that they indicate that the accusations of exploitation may well be warranted.

[RitrovataBlue]

In this case, is there any ambiguity regarding exploitation? The stars of Blue stayed that they felt uncomfortable during their sex scenes, which were apparently filmed over a course of days and with a great deal of directorial insistence. Frankly, if I thought I were working on an art film and suddenly found myself enacting the director’s masturbatory fantasies, I would feel incredibly exploited/deceived/abused. And I don’t think many performers would disagree with me. After all, HBO has recently begun hiring sex scene consultants to ensure that performers don’t lose their agency, don’t face unexpected demands, and don’t come away consequently feeling abused - because their performers often ended up feeling abused. A filmmaker has a great deal of power, and that power is often abused. Just because someone does something in front of a camera does not mean that they did so without coercion, or without a violation of consent. Alejandro Jodorowsky famously admitted to having raped an extra in El Topo, and the viewer is none the wiser. We cannot dismiss reports of abuse by filmmakers, and Kekiche was reported by the actresses in Blue as an exploiter, if not an outright abuser. If anything, though, these reports on the conditions of shooting Mektoub are worse than mere exploitation and verge on direct physical abuse. After all, how many people have their consent violated while drunk?

[tenia]

I think the distinction was between exploiting the actors (as human beings) and making a movie looking like something Vinegar Syndrome would pick up.

[domino harvey]

What’s the source for that piece, tenia?

[Never Cursed]

Here, I think

[Nasir007]

There is some confusion about the production of these movies. Does anyone have a source that confirms how they were shot?

I have read in some places that the 3 films - Canto Uno, Intermezzo and Canto Due - were all shot sequentially in one long stretch and that he edited them separately to make 3 separate films.

While other reports indicate that there was a break in filming between.

I guess my question it, does this reception put a wrench in him completing the series? Is Canto Due already shot and what are the chances of it being completed now?

[tenia]

Original piece from Le Midi Libre (logical, since the movie was shot at Sète).

[moreorless]

In Blue, Kekiche relies on intense facial close-ups (shot in handheld/shaky cam style) for nearly the entire duration of the film. The lighting is natural; the framing is incidental.

I really can't agree with that point, I mean yes I spose the lighting attempt to appear "natural" but I think the film is very far from some kind of incidental realism in a lot of its shots. That to have Sofian "Timbuktu" El Fani working as a cinematographer is I think quite apparent when it comes to the film looking to be visually expansive. To me the film as a whole feels like its clearly looking to go beyond mere representation of reality towards visuals that highlight its drama and I think you could argue the sex scenes are doing the same, as say a character floating in an impossible ocean is ment to convey sadness/longing so there in part meant to get across eroticism although I think combined with emotional release after the buildup of tension/repression earlier in the film. Indeed I think the film itself looks to comment on sexualised art being potentially exploitive when it jumps forward in time having Adele model for Emma in a fashion that seems much colder and against her desires.

I do wonder how much of the media reaction to BITWC and indeed Kechiche since is down to the politics of that film? I mean to me it seems like it takes what you would normally expect to be a film built around for the want of a better phase "identity politics" focusing on a character dealing with homophobia and personal acceptance of sexual persuasion is instead more of a drama based on social class. Showing a relationship broken up by class issues in which the character from the intelligentsia shows a lack of respect for a working class character, trying to mould her into something worthy of respect from her peers and then rejecting her when she sticks with her own priorities. I would say its a film that casts a very critical eye on exactly the kind of people who would be commenting on it in the media making a case for the negatives of elitism in such a world and its disinterest in class/economic issues in favour of focus on gender/race/sexuality/etc.

As far as Mektoub goes I was actually surprised to find a relatively unheralded DVD release of the first film in the UK a couple of weeks ago. I would say that it clearly doesn't have the kind of extremely emotional drama that BITWC did nore indeed the same kind of political focus and instead puts a lot of the same tools towards more subtle nostalgia for some sun kissed semi autobiographical youth. It is clearly very focused on physical attraction despite nominally having much less nudity in it but really is that such a negative thing? I mean that good looking young people who hang around on beaches spend a lot of time checking out each others bodies(including attractive often shirtless men) is surely a pretty realistic idea? is showing a male characters physical attraction to a female character(and indeed the reverse) and her enjoying it automatically a negative thing? especially considering said characters also engage in a great deal of flirty conservation.

The issue I would have with Bay's Transformers(beyond its general lack of quality) is that the female characters seems present only to provide something for audience so attracted to look at in a sexual fashion whilst having little substance to them even by Bay's own low standards. I don't think that's really a criticism you could level at this film, I mean yes it does look to get across its characterisation and drama in a very indirection fashion but I don't think it treats the female character in fundamentally different fashion to the male lead.

[tenia]

You probably can depict young horny people being horny people without, again, resorting to Bay's way of shooting Megan Fox's ass.

As for Blue, I'd argue that actually, the reasons for the break-up probably are the worst part of the movie. The build up is very good, the break up and the consequences devastating, but for a 3h movie, I always felt the movie was doing a poor job at showing us why the break-up could be so hard and difficult and violent. It doesn't spend enough time showing us Adèle and Emma's couple to get to the point they feel fusional enough to get such a violent break-up.
And even then, the break-up doesn't seem that much contextualised. They seem to have different interests in life, sure, they come from different backgrounds (in a very cliché way, though) but OK, and it looks like Emma's friends are the worst kind of self-centered hipsters, well enough, but that's pretty much it. For instance, the scene explaining how Emma and Adèle ended up living together has been cut from the final cut.

I'm not saying the politics isn't there (it is) (plus : the day it was awarded the Palme d'or, same-sex marriage was legalised in France), but I don't believe the movie should / can be read through this prism.

The issue I would have with Bay's Transformers(beyond its general lack of quality) is that the female characters seems present only to provide something for audience so attracted to look at in a sexual fashion whilst having little substance to them even by Bay's own low standards.

Dara O'Briain probably summed up quite accurately what Bay was aiming for there.

[moreorless]

You probably can depict young horny people being horny people without, again, resorting to Bay's way of shooting Megan Fox's ass.

I would say Bay's way of shooting is generally cruder/clunkier but I think the difference is you get the sense this is all he is really interested in. I mean theres a lot of focus on physical attraction in Mektoub its true but I would say theres even more focus on the flirty conservation revealing some chemsity between the two of them, something that always seemed a distant second for Bay.

The main criticism of the first part away would I'd say "did we need a 3 hour piece of nostalgia for the directors youth without much dramatic drive?", Personally I found the style did justify its existence, as with BITWC I do think its a very good looking atmospheric piece of cinema and I do think Kechiche films extended flirty conservation in a very realistic fashion that makes a lot of other films feel over scripted rather than depending on subtler performance. Perhaps not essential cinema if your not very fond of his style and arguably a sign of a director becoming overly self obsessed after a great sucess but I didn't see anything that offensive in it, obviously can't speak for the second film not having seen it.

As for Blue, I'd argue that actually, the reasons for the break-up probably are the worst part of the movie. The build up is very good, the break up and the consequences devastating, but for a 3h movie, I always felt the movie was doing a poor job at showing us why the break-up could be so hard and difficult and violent. It doesn't spend enough time showing us Adèle and Emma's couple to get to the point they feel fusional enough to get such a violent break-up.
And even then, the break-up doesn't seem that much contextualised. They seem to have different interests in life, sure, they come from different backgrounds (in a very cliché way, though) but OK, and it looks like Emma's friends are the worst kind of self-centered hipsters, well enough, but that's pretty much it. For instance, the scene explaining how Emma and Adèle ended up living together has been cut from the final cut.

I'm not saying the politics isn't there (it is) (plus : the day it was awarded the Palme d'or, same-sex marriage was legalised in France), but I don't believe the movie should / can be read through this prism.

I think the Mektoub films really make clear that the reason its 3 hours long isn't really that its exhaustive in the events it covers but more a reflection of Kechiche lingering on scenes. At the centre you have the device of shifting forward several years that leaves the audience to infer a lot of the reasons for the breakdown of the relationship and I did think it gives us enough to do that.

I'd say the divide was shown as more than just difference in background/career but also in personality. Emma as more of an individualist focused on personal success expecting the same of Adele who whilst she has a decent enough career has more of an empathic dive. I think that aspect avoided becoming too clichéd as well, it didn't have Emma as a ruthless business type or Adele as some purely motherly blue collar saint.

Again I would say that the relation to gay marriage would also be the reverse of the films political intension, suggesting that focus on race/gender/sexual equality whilst needed has been used to avoid addressing issues of class and social outlook. I'd say that's a message that's not welcomed by a lot of the media who would comment on this kind of film and perhaps behind some of the hostility we saw? easier to focus on the arguments around the sex within the film.

[Nasir007]

Another article now in the mainstream English language media here - https://www.indiewire.com/2019/05/mekto ... 202144998/

This film series is doomed. With these reports, these films are NEVER, and I mean it - NEVER, getting an official release in the United States.

I will repeat my question from a few days ago - is this series doomed forever? Will it be completed? Has "Canto Due" already been shot?

(If the answer is no then I think this is it for the series. I don't think the actors will come back to finish the last part.)

[furbicide]

I'm a huge believer in separating the art from the artist and totally oppose attempts to end, say, Woody Allen and Roman Polanski's careers, but if these reports are true then I think it's kind of fair enough if Kechiche doesn't get to finish his trilogy. One crucial aspect of considering the personal virtue of the artist (IMO none of our business) separately from their work is that artists actually should be accountable for how they handle the production of that work, and if Kechiche has done something so ethically indefensible then he's totally betrayed the trust of the actors who put their faith in him. That's the kind of #MeToo stuff that should end careers.

[domino harvey]

Have I missed this being anything but an unattributed claim? As is, this is just unsubstantiated gossip

[tenia]

Though it fits many descriptions of Kechiche's ways of working, it currently remains so far a testimony to be taken, indeed, with a pinch of salt.