Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno

It’s true (as the Sight & Sound review points out) that the protagonist of this three-hour sun-dappled epic is a bit vacant. Amin is our stand-in and camera lens – an observer-participant who spends most of his time observing. The youthful romantic dalliances that drift around him on a holiday in the French Mediterranean are seductive and bewildering, but he never gets involved, even though he has ample opportunity to. When he voyeuristically spies on the sex scene at the start of the film, we assume that a love triangle is being set up between him, his cousin Tony and his childhood friend Ophélie. But although he flirts a little bit, he never actually gets with the girl. Instead it’s all photography to him. He’ll take photos of Ophélie naked as a way to develop as an artist, but he won’t sleep with her. The friend zone is maintained strictly throughout.

That's just the most obvious example of the director Abdellatif Kechiche sending up our expectations. When Tony chats up another girl on the beach called Charlotte we think that Amin, who's with Tony but is less confident picking up random ladies, will end up with Charlotte's similarly less confident Céline. But Céline turns out to be a total down-for-whatever-and-whoever party girl. Likewise that initial sex scene, which as in Kechiche's Blue Is The Warmest Colour is designed to establish in no uncertain terms the intense physical connection between the couple. The bond between Tony and Ophélie is subsequently pulled apart bit by bit by the rest of the film's portrayal of Tony’s irresponsible, philandering actions.

The biggest re-evaluation comes with Charlotte's character, who we dismiss as a fool and a drama queen for being hoodwinked by Tony, who is obviously an untrustworthy rake. But like Amin, she turns out to be an outsider, and they unexpectedly end up hanging out at the end of the film. Even though there is a strong connection between Amin and Ophélie, he decides not to act on it when he realises that she’s a bit too much of a party girl like Céline. Instead it's Charlotte, now estranged from the rest of the characters, that he decides to spend time with. Perhaps her wish for a more serious relationship with Tony is what appeals to Amin, who is also after something more serious than a summer fling.

I am being more patronising than Amin, perhaps. But the film constantly reinforces his sense of superiority. Perhaps it would have been a stronger piece of work without an outsider at the centre. Amin is very obviously a stand-in for the director – he writes screenplays, is an amateur photographer, and wants to date Russian literature students. He’s a social class climber, who loves his community and his roots, but ultimately ran away to Paris to be a student and still wants to go and achieve greater things than work at a family restaurant, drink at the beach and clumsily try to seduce pretty girls on holiday.

There is something very weird about Kechiche, who not only alienated the stars of his previous hit Blue Is The Warmest Colour for the way he approached the filming of a lengthy sex scene, but is also now under investigation for sexual assault, to make a film about what flirting used to be like in the good old days of 1994. Mektoub, My Love is a mostly sunny paean to a time when this kind of brazen lasciviousness was totally one hundred per cent not a problem. None of the women mind being ogled by the characters and Kechiche's camera. They find it charming. The ageing pissed lotharios who feel them up are just good for a laugh. But at what point does flirting end and harassment begin?

It's all OK in the world of the film – the women like it, accept it, or save each other from unwanted attention. But the risk of misreading what's going on in such situations is severe, and I for one am not too sorry that this kind of behaviour is no longer acceptable (if it ever really was). Kechiche seems to be hankering for a time before the complications exposed by #MeToo surfaced, and people could run the risk of being more playful with each other. It feels suspicious – like he's trying to make excuses for himself.

But there's something masterful about his technique. Some have found this film frustratingly long and aimless, and ultimately tedious. I was hooked pretty much throughout – the only dull stretch comes when Amin spends an evening trying to photograph lambs being born. But even that is to the film's purpose, in that it demonstrates how Amin finds this solitary activity more fulfilling than having fun with his beautiful friends at a nightclub. And it's those beautiful friends that are the source of intrigue and interest in the film. Incrementally figuring out their shifting relationships and allegiances makes for supremely watchable cinema.

The Life of Adèle – Chapters 1 & 2

I'm using the original French title of the film, because although it's adapted from the comic Blue is the Warmest Colour (which is great), this is a different beast. Abdellatif Kechiche combined the source material with another story he was developing, about a teacher who stoically sticks to her duty despite her turbulent private life. So while chapter one remains quite close to Maroh's outline, chapter two goes down a different road.

Have to say I found the second half a lot more interesting, and I don't think it's just because I was already familiar with the first half. For all the endless takes and improvisation, Kechiche isn't shooting a documentary. His frames are carefully composed, as are his scenes – and much of the sexual awakening stuff at the beginning feels like heightened high school drama, removed and idealised away from the awkward, messy reality.

The film is notoriously long, and I think some of it is bloat. It tickled me to learn that Kechiche worked with several editors when cutting – I imagine he rather enjoyed the divide and rule opportunities this created. But the most fraught editing choice I agree with. Some critics found the explicit sex scenes dragged on into the gratuitous, but I think they are necessary. I'm oversimplifying only slightly when I describe Adèle and Emma's relationship as being built on their physical passion for each other, and destroyed by everything else. Part of this is class – while they live in the same town they are drawn from different cultures. But they also make their own destinies, and the film makes clear that their interests and goals diverge.

But understanding that iron grip of sexual obsession is crucial to justifying the extraordinary scene in the bar towards the end – the first time they see each other after the break-up. It is heartrending because both women are desperate for that intimacy once again. Adèle is delirious and collapses into grovelling, but Emma is mature enough to tear herself away from temptation. She loves someone else – Adèle is no longer the centre of her story.

This is a blow the comic could not deliver (it goes in a slightly forced bereavement direction instead). Adèle is hollowed out at the end of the film, giving even a potential race for your love the slip. The French language title provides the only source of comfort: this is only chapters one and two. Adèle walks away from her first relationship, and into a life comprised of many other chapters.

The closest parallel here is probably Boyhood, which I managed to see in the cinema and felt like I could watch go on for an entire lifespan. Linklater's film also isn't a documentary – it is suffused with affect. But it tries to present the development of a character as completely as possible. Likewise we see Adèle eating, dancing, working, sleeping, cleaning, showering and cumming. We get a picture of a rounded personality (thankfully less privileged than the one in Boyhood). But at some point the film has to stop and the credits need to roll, even if we don't want them to.