Mektoub, My Love: Canto Uno / Intermezzo / Canto Due (Abdellatif Kechiche, 2017-2025)

[Never Cursed]

Psst, Abdellatif, buddy … ever heard of a little something we like to call "backchannels"?

I'll be surprised if these ever materialize there. If they won't be 'released' anywhere, it's hard to imagine, unless someone with access to both the prints and the channels chooses to do so at risk, but there's a big difference between an old title like Stop! with less eyes on it getting upped by some noble saint than this debacle

All this is true, plus I can't imagine that, as the current owner of the film, Kechiche would desire the free illicit distribution of something he presumably made at personal cost (not to mention anyone else that would stand to receive royalties or money from a distribution deal). It would end his career, which he seems to want to quite fiercely protect. Still kinda can't believe that he secured financing for another film following what happened with these

[aewb]

There were rumours that Kechiche had given copies to pirates in Paris but I’m sure the film would’ve ended up online if that were true.

[domino harvey]

If copies exist and are circulating, even privately, it will only be a matter of time

[therewillbeblus]

I hope you're right.. and that we get the original cut for Intermezzo, if it still exists

[Mr Sausage]

I imagine the actress who was plied with alcohol and coerced into performing actual sex acts on camera is relieved the film is likely never getting released.

[therewillbeblus]

Yes, it was insensitive of me to plainly hope for a release of a film that's inherently problematic for valid reasons. Sometimes my selfish 'I want to see this' side blocks out the memory of why it's not available from a moral space. To pivot on that subject, I really hope Ophélie Bau continues to get work- if she even wants it. I'd really like to see what else she can do.

[Mr Sausage]

Yes, it was insensitive of me to plainly hope for a release of a film that's inherently problematic for valid reasons. Sometimes my selfish 'I want to see this' side blocks out the memory of why it's not available from a moral space. To pivot on that subject, I really hope Ophélie Bau continues to get work- if she even wants it. I'd really like to see what else she can do.

Oh shit, I really didn’t mean it like that. It was just a random thought I had while reading the recent posts. At no point did I think you were being insensitive or anything.

[therewillbeblus]

Oh, no worries, I didn't think you were pointing at me- you brought up an important point, and it moved me to respond. It's actually an interesting dilemma to consider following my interpretation of Kechiche's thematic interests in reframing exploitation as admiration and even honest declarations of tangible intimacy, as I wrote up on the previous page related to Canto Uno and initially developed the theory while watching Black Venus before it

[Never Cursed]

Obviously take this with more than a grain of salt given its source, but Jordan Ruimy is reporting that the long-in-limbo third installment of this series will premiere at Locarno this year (so next month), and that its appearance at the festival will be announced tomorrow.

[yoloswegmaster]

Don't know why we're treating Ruimy like he's credible when he just stole this information from someone on the Awardsworthy forum who posted about Mektoub being announced at Locarno a couple of days ago.

[The Narrator Returns]

My girlfriend informed me that multiple times, someone’s posted a bullshit scoop on AwardsWorthy solely to see if Ruimy would post it, and of course he did. She doesn’t think that’s the case here, though that could easily mean the original poster got a bad scoop that’s now been foolishly spread twice.

[tenia]

Canto Due has actually been announced.

[domino harvey]

Could see a label like VS or KLSC releasing the trilogy, they seem fairly immune to caring about the faction of audiences that would protest such a release

[Never Cursed]

Wow, Canto Due only runs 134 minutes. Wonder if he was obliged to edit it down again

[Zot!]

Say what you will about Kechiche, his persistence to complete his butt trilogy is "formidable"...we are closing in on a decade now. Intermezzo never even had a domestic home video release from what I can tell.

My minor comment regarding the (now ancient) controversy concerning the extensive prurient content. It strikes me as ironic that the mainstream continues to accept films featuring drawn out extreme violence, like literally carving holes in naked people the entire feature is a fine evenings entertainment, but be sticklers for the sexy stuff alone as being gratuitous. It's almost like we're willing to accept nudity, sex, and even aggression against women as respectable content, but only as long as we see everyone chopped up in due course. I for one am ok with watching an artistic movie about gawking at butts without the obligatory bloodshed.

[Never Cursed]

Libération has published a lengthy article concerning Kechiche's struggles to get Intermezzo and Canto Due released. Definitely worth a read for anyone still invested in the situation, but the short version is that Kechiche's editors assume that Intermezzo will never be released. The version of the film that screened at Cannes was a "rough cut" that needed to be trimmed down (and was reduced to about two hours), but:

"We went from three hours of copyright infringement to one and a half hours. We did the math one day: it'd cost a million (euros)."

The specific song cited as driving up the cost the most was a dance remix of ABBA's "Voulez-vous" that loops repeatedly. The shorter cut also lacks the controversial unsimulated sex scene with Ophélie Bau, presumably because the production could not get her to clear it for release. Following the disastrous premiere of Intermezzo at Cannes, Kechiche and crew tried to raise the money to finish Canto Due for a year until the head of Why Not Productions financed the editing process, which boiled down to watching the enormous amount of filmed footage for Canto Due (the article claims it to be 1000 hours of footage, which took them two years to get through), creating a rough cut from that, and submitting it to Cannes in 2024 without Kechiche's approval (where it was rejected). Kechiche then edited for another year, this time with the cooperation of producer Riccardo Marchegiani, until he suffered from a stroke in March of this year that has apparently left him unable to read or write. Marchegiani took the version that Kechiche had mostly finished and was in the process of getting it ready to play at Directors' Fortnight until some nebulous force killed the screening: either Ophélie Bau again refused to sign off on the film following investigations into mistreatment by Kechiche on set, or the selection people at Quinzaine simply didn't like it enough.

Ultimately, Kechiche's career as a filmmaker is probably over following the release of Canto Due for a number of reasons: his stroke, the various bridges he's burned, accusations of mistreatment made against him by Ophélie Bau and others, and the fact that he filmed an entire separate project during the post-COVID lull between Intermezzo and Canto Due that is itself unfinished and abandoned, wasting even more of Why Not's money on a separate unreleasable film. And while Canto Due will probably release in Europe this year, Intermezzo will likely only see the light of day if it is put out illegally.

[Zot!]

Canto Due is premiering and playing In Competition at Locarno in August. The fate of Intermezzo sounds less certain.

https://www.locarnofestival.ch/festival ... &l=en&eid=

[Never Cursed]

Yep, I posted the same above. I more meant that I am not certain if it will release in theaters/have a home video release this year.

[Zot!]

Yep, I posted the same above. I more meant that I am not certain if it will release in theaters/have a home video release this year.

Yes, sorry, I missed your reference to the festival date. It is quite a saga.

[Altair]

Thanks for summarising the article Never Cursed and keeping up with the various, contorted twists to the Kechiche saga. I didn't know about the stroke - that's quite horrendous. I have to say I'm still intrigued to see Canto Due - let's hope some kind of English-friendly release occurs.

[tenia]

I am however a bit bothered at how Bau is mentioned in the article, as if she's actively responsible for part of this debacle, how she "scarred" all this. It does read a bit like switching the victim around, while Kechiche seemingly will shoot 8 months (!) worth of rushes instead rather than at some point starting to get a sense of what he wants to do and what he needs to achieve that and maybe that's the biggest issue.

[Never Cursed]

Images and a clip of Canto Due posted on Locarno's website

[Never Cursed]

Canto Due will be released in French theaters this December by Pathé

[domino harvey]

One of the stars of Due, Jessica Pennington, who was just nominated for a Lumiere Award, is probably better known to some of you by a different name (NSFW if your IT guy knows who this is)

[Zot!]

Finally finished Canto Uno and I think that in my mind I'm making it out to be far more interesting than it actually is. Kechiche at first appears to be channelling Rozier's loose hold on narrative and Rohmer's interactive observation breathing life into the banal, but opposingly dressed up in shiny superficialities. We are afforded some actors (Ophélie Bau, Lou Luttiau) who provide authentic expressions that subtly indicate a glimpse of Du Cote D'Orouët's fearless ability to leave us at a distance yet force a feeling of intimate connection to these objective expressions; but the camera isn’t generous enough to focus on these truths, instead diverting attention constantly to the distractions of visual saturation of physical beauty (people mostly, but also natural and unnatural inanimate settings) to make any authentic pronouncement stick. Perhaps the point is that in our modern age as Kechiche sees it, the artificiality is so blended with our milieu that it becomes authentic, that an overwhelmingly sexual gaze, especially in the mystical energy of body movement as expression, is more honest that a removed one that seeks to pierce the distractions of the flesh to the core of the human. I have wondered before in my writeup on Black Venus that maybe he is suggesting that this beauty isn’t a barrier but an access point and substance of value itself, with those of us searching for more emotional responses divorced from this as kidding ourselves and ignorant via a false sense of intellectual superiority to its significance.

Conversations are also less ‘deep’ in this film, but are "realistic" conversations as emotionally vulnerable or philosophically dense as in a Rohmer film? Is it possible that there is an obnoxiously aloof protective coating of sociological engagement that is every bit as honest as the cinematic definitions of authentic anthropology? These are provocative questions, but it's too bad the film itself doesn’t have much to engage with in a way that keeps this audience member invested for three hours, aside from some skin, music, beauty, and brief pockets of expressions that tell us nothing yet feel even more truthful for that very reason. I appreciated that a lot, at least. I just wish that the characters were more interesting or developed to help forge some connection between us and them, because I think this could have been a fresh take on those nouvelle vague concepts if perhaps we could share the beauty with the soul. As it is, I can't call this film a success even if it's onto a unique strategy to apply to the strong roots of some of the best films, and my favorite type of film, that seeks to signify authentic human behavior and emotion using creatively diverse possibilities of the medium.

FINALLY saw Canto Uno via the serviceable Curzon DVD, and I think this a pretty fair take. This thread is heavily focused on the prurient nature of this, but honestly, outside of a brief but impressive introductory scene, this is a PG movie for 95% of its 3 hour run time (i.e. zero nudity). A scene of a sheep in labor lingers much longer than the butts, and the rest of the film's content is consistently less explicit than a typical pop music video. The sex scene in question is pretty essential in that it sets up our hero's entire internal battle between id and ego and where he fits returning home and suddenly finding himself an outsider. And I think that is my main criticism. There is very little here to chew on, and what there is is pretty well covered by a dozen other coming of age films. Perhaps it reminded me most of Eustache's Mes Petites Amoureuses. So be thankful for the butts, because considering the quotes from religious books at the beginning, this is pretty clearly intended as a set piece for a grand battle of the flesh vs the spirit, with our protagonist consistently and heroically battling to elevate himself above the merely corporal.