#KVIFF58 | Cabo Negro | Curator's Choice

Its name may sound a bit foreign to us, unless someone is traveling through Morocco, it's actually the name of a beach resort or a holiday area in Morocco where a young pair arrives, a man and a woman, they're really, really young, they could be in their early twenties They want to live in the guy's lover's mansion, and he doesn't show up. And actually, the movie has such a summer mood of that summer resort, Slow, but at the same time, kind of easy. It's that light, actually, sun fatigue, vacation fatigue, with a sort of slightly mysterious undertone, since we don't know what had happened to the lover, he's tied to the villa where they live in. He has some employees who are also a little confused. The Moroccan reality seeps into it a bit. The reality of the people who live there and serve the tourist business a little bit. But at the same time, even these two youngsters they're not doing very well, lets' say, physically or mentally. So they kind of want to enjoy themselves and kind of float through it. Saying that the movie's slow, I wouldn't do the film any good... It's kind of that lazy summer slowness. Well for me, it's that the slowness corresponds with the fact that it's an absurd drama, or like Waiting for Godot, because it's kind of a timelessness and it's summer when we don't have to do the things we normally do in our daily lives, but at the same time through those situations, through some sort of characters that appear That's where current issues like migrants and so on come in. And at the same time, the film is very contemporary, regarding the concept of some sort of open relationships and sexuality. For me, it's definitely some expression of contemporary cinema. You nicely sidestepped the danger of spoilers, In this film I was surprised that Moroccan creator, even though he is mostly French, but that doesn't matter in this case. How modern it is, I would say, it that sense of heroes acting without scruples. That's all I'll say. And the obviousness of that act, what is not very common in Moroccan cinema or partly Moroccan cinema. But at the same time, it's not something he had to invent, because it was originally created based on a pair of Moroccan travelers that the director followed on Instagram and actually based on these two he wrote a novel, because, at the same time, he's a writer and then made it into a film. So this really is the current Morocco, and it's nothing that he wishes was in present-day Morocco, but it is what it is really like in there. At the same time, the fact that he's a writer is very obvious, that the film feels a bit like that book you open on the beach during your summer vacation Everything is described so nicely, that slow, lazy pace. It's like a novella embodied in a film narrative, exactly there is that lazy summer, and he films it as a long shot. And one could imagine exactly how this would be written in a book. I mean, it's kind of quiet like descriptiveness of the things that is subtle and it is similar to reading that book, that novel. Yeah, it's kind of divided into chapters, it's not like it's higlighted in there. It feels like it's divided into chapters, it has some sort of that bookish kind of rhythm. But at the same time, I don't think it's just kind of a laid-back summer. Let's just have fun. It is a summer that hides such as, for example, some distressing moments or something that we might not expect. And that actually made it all feel more intenesely for me, that the descriptiveness feels kind of light on the one hand, but on the other one there are hidden meanings that we wouldn't expect to be there. And they can be all the more powerful. Yeah, I think without spoilers we can say that the two of them don't have much money. And thus are forced to take some steps to at least have some money to spend. Well. This movie gives a pretty positive meaning to the word descriptiveness, because I think this word is used in a negative sense by most film critics and I think it's unfair, because descriptiveness can be a certain element that shifts narrative further and is effective and therefore appreciated by many viewers. I'd add directness. I think that in many things that the film wants to convey, it's very straightforward, and that feels right, that it saves some mystery or some sort of ambiguity for other parts. But in what you've described, it's really like a straightforwardness... Which is actually something that's not a topic for him, and therefore he might as well just say it in one phone call and focus on other things. Well, like, he's actually combining the descriptiveness with some, like, cinematic art of a shortcut, where actually next to that descriptiveness is like the opposite of some light ellipticity light cryptogamy of the narrative. And it struck me as so very powerful that actually while some scenes may be more descriptive, then it's nicely balanced with exactly the kind of scene that is just gonna hint and hint to the viewer and then move on. There's a beautiful balancing act between the openness, directness, and something that doesn't actually tell you. And you have to engage your own brain and figure something out. That's right. And it's also the perfect length. It is sometimes said among film critics that if the film is 77 minutes or less, they automatically give one extra star.