The Blue Caftan film review — finely stitched story of illicit love in Morocco

In The Blue Caftan, the garment in question is a bespoke item created with meticulous care by Halim, a Moroccan maalem or master tailor. As the gown takes shape, with its intricate gold embroidery, it becomes a metaphor for the film itself: a superb piece of old-fashioned narrative tailoring by writer-director Maryam Touzani.

The setting is the Moroccan town Salé, where Halim (Saleh Bakri) runs a shop with his wife Mina (Lubna Azabal). He cuts and stitches in the back room, she cannily handles their difficult customers. With its insistence on slow-crafted artisanal perfection, the business is in trouble, and the couple hope that their latest apprentice Youssef (Ayoub Missioui) will ease the burden. But he may also be a problem. For Halim leads a closeted existence, snatching erotic encounters — illegal in Morocco — with other men in the local bathhouse. The presence of the handsome Youssef makes Halim nervously distracted, as Mina is only too aware, Touzani’s direction acutely capturing the flow of glances between the three, variously charged with desire, anxiety, suspicion.

Mina’s frustration is longstanding; in one delicately handled, slow-burning scene, the couple make love even as Halim’s face shows that his mind is on something, or someone, else. Even so — and this is where the film so beautifully resists the schematic — the pair love each other deeply, enjoying tender closeness and complicity, as when they playfully mock a pompous customer.

The situation is so rich in possibility that Touzani might seem to overload the drama by having Mina suffer from a long-term illness — but The Blue Caftan more than rises to these high stakes. The acting is wonderfully subtle, intense feelings sometimes conveyed with just a murmur.

Azabal makes Mina impish, sharply alert and uncrushably defiant both towards her clients and the everyday repressions of Moroccan life — at one point, she insists on accompanying Halim to a café with an all-male clientele. Bakri meanwhile elegantly downplays Halim as a fastidious introvert; this calm, controlled performance is a reclamation of the thinking, quiet craftsman as hero. If Missioui doesn’t quite match up to the others, with Youssef never much more than a brooding hunk, it’s by contrast with the older pair’s finely tuned grace. Cinematographer Virginie Surdej displays an exquisite touch for close-ups (faces, fabrics, in one gorgeous shot even a segment of tangerine), while the blue of the caftan cuts sharply through the earth tones of the medina setting.

This is Touzani’s second film, following 2019’s Adam; she is also known as co-writer with her husband Nabil Ayouch, whose own films, including recent rap drama Casablanca Beats, similarly confront repressive norms in Moroccan culture. The country’s entry for the 2023 Oscars, the unapologetically accessible The Blue Caftan is something of a high-class tear-jerker, but of a mature, insightful kind. Tugging the heartstrings with expert finesse, it is richly satisfying, with a deep commitment to aesthetic pleasure and craft, and to love and joy against the severity of dogma. A handcrafted pleasure indeed.

★★★★☆

In UK cinemas from May 5