There have been films in which I’ve cried harder and longer than this one, but The Blue Caftan is more tender and heartbreaking than any of them. The first act told me this was a beautifully shot, well-acted, tender film. The second act started leading me in a different direction to my initial thought, and that surprise is what turned me into a blank slate to be absolutely destroyed in the third act. This third act cleverly contains the scenes which are simultaneously the saddest and happiest moments. It makes the characters face everything they’re afraid of, and that hurdle leads them to both heartbreak and joy.
Halim (Saleh Bakri) and his wife Mina (Lubna Azabul) run a caftan shop, handsewing and tailoring everything whilst customers complain Halim takes too long to sew. They struggle to get by, especially as the younger generation and their modern desires don’t always fit the traditional. They employ the help of younger man Youssef (Ayoub Missioui) to help speed up the sewing, but Mina sees how taken her husband is with him.
To call this film bittersweet only scratches the surface of the intense emotions portrayed, mostly displayed through lingering looks and stolen touches. The love that Hilam has for his wife Mina is so utterly pure and unbreakable, that any thoughts he has for another man are tangibly torturous. We see and feel and hate how he hides his feelings, but know why he does it. The religious elements of Mina’s day-to-day are an important, but very quiet, part of her character. The simple traditions she involves herself in are a part of her, just as the rebellious smoking and dancing and attitudes towards police are. She is traditional, in her religious beliefs and handtailoring stance, but understands the growth and change needed to survive and live.
Her husband also embodies this. His techniques and abilities may be slower than a sewing machine, but the traditional techniques taught from his father are what makes him the strongest in his field. His identity does not stop him loving his wife, nor loving another man. He can be both conventional and contemporary, as can Mina, and these transversal acts elevate this film from a straightforward queer love story to something incredibly tender and touching to any culture and audience.
Youssef occasionally falls into the trap of just being a tool for the other two to progress on their own journey, with no real reason to his own presence or character. However, the mystery of his background, lightly peered into here and there, works with the up and down balance between Halim and Mina. It was important to have the younger generation not just contained within the bitchy teenage attitudes of the customer’s children, or contemporarily-dressed young adults that roam the streets, but in the quiet Youssef that hangs between the beauty of tradition and progression.
It’s also interesting to see how their identities fit into the camera’s role. There are spaces that can be considered ‘safe’ for Hilam’s secretive identity – but still completely hidden, even from the camera. In contrast, Mina and Hilam are physically intimate on-screen. There are matches in image, in the stroking of Hilam’s breast by Mina that translates so tenderly into the narrative later on, which equalise the two genders and show that all love is the same despite the camera showing otherwise at first. The camera is not the eye, in this case, but the thought. Hilam is ashamed and unable to express his feelings, so must hide them from sight. Mina so desperately wants Hilam to prove his love through physical expression (‘the norm’) that they show it on-screen, despite the hidden feelings. What’s shown isn’t what’s right, and this makes the third act all that more magical when the self-expression flourishes in ways more important than sex, in the brightness of the colourful caftan and the joyful dancing. No longer afraid to love, the camera transcends into showing the truest forms of affection.
8.5/10
one small screen 