In "A Story of Love and Desire" by Leyla Bouzid, a young man of Algerian origin falls in love with a Tunisian girl who is smarter than him.
The director evokes male sexuality and reveals the waltz-hesitation between modesty and impulses.
Discovered at the Cannes Critics' Week, this beautiful sensual film also received two awards at the Angoulême Francophone Film Festival.
Everything is in the title or almost.
A story of love and desire
by Leyla Bouzid is about both.
From the passion that a young suburbanite of Algerian origin feels for a college friend and his terror of taking action when he is dying to do it.
Discovered at the Semaine de la Critique in July in Cannes, then awarded the Valois de Diamant and the interpretation prize for Sami Outalbali at the Angoulême Francophone Film Festival, this incandescent film, all in delicate sensuality, explores desire male.
A feminine look
"So many men have dealt with female sexuality that I did not see why a woman would not allow herself to evoke that of a man", confides the director to
20 Minutes
. The quality of Leyla Bouzid's film proves that she was right a thousand times to look into the subject. The relationship between this shy boy embodied by Sami Outalbali, seen in the series
Sex Education
and
Les Grands
, and a Tunisian less timid than him but just as fragile (Zbeida Belhajamor, a touching debutante as a student in love) are punctuated by erotic Arabic poems that 'they are studying at university.
"He desires it passionately and does not assume it," explains the director.
His culture and his doubts slow him down in his desire to live his impulses.
It is a subject that has received little attention in the cinema, with the exception of comedies like
40 years old and still a virgin
.
Far from the schoolboy humor of a Judd Apatow, the director of
Barely I open my eyes
(2015) reveals the point of view of this sensitive boy torn between his thirst for love and the barriers he faces. 'imposed.
The beauty of bodies and texts
“I also wanted to talk about the diversity of points of view within the Maghreb community, insists Leyla Bouzid. Between a Tunisian recently arrived in Paris and a suburbanite who has never known Algeria, there are inevitably differences. »Starting with the conception of sexual freedom. Or the place of men and women in society ...
The filmmaker takes care to film the bodies with modesty, giving a delicate flavor to this
Story of love and desire
.
The spectator suspends his breath, moved by so much beauty in the image as in the texts read by the protagonists.
“If the hero only wanted a sexual experience or a platonic relationship, everything would be easier for him,” explains Leyla Bouzid.
The fact that he wants both makes things more complicated.
It is from this complexity that the irresistible charm of this beautiful film is born, which celebrates the need to love and to be loved.
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