The bittersweet travails of two not-very-successful Casablanca-based debt collectors as they traverse the arid villages of Morocco in search of loan deadbeats eventually intersects with a tragic love story in “Deserts,” the sixth feature from Moroccan writer-director Faouzi Bensaïdi. Boasting striking Cinemascope visuals, it’s a nonlinear drama spiked with ellipses that mixes moods and genres. Those that prefer straightforward cinema with dotted I’s and crossed T’s will be out of their comfort zone here, but it looks like manna for cinephiles. Bensaïdi, who has a parallel career as an actor and theater director, is an auteur who is overdue for a retrospective Stateside.
At the beginning, Bensaïdi gives viewers a clue to the film’s unconventionality as the map that wrinkled-suit-and-tie-clad Mehdi (Fehd Benchemsi) and Hamid (Abdelhadi Taleb) are examining blows away. As the two men make their way around some picturesque but impoverished villages, the stories...
At the beginning, Bensaïdi gives viewers a clue to the film’s unconventionality as the map that wrinkled-suit-and-tie-clad Mehdi (Fehd Benchemsi) and Hamid (Abdelhadi Taleb) are examining blows away. As the two men make their way around some picturesque but impoverished villages, the stories...
- 12/3/2023
- by Alissa Simon
- Variety Film + TV
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