The Blue Caftan: Stitching together love and yearning in modern Morocco

An elderly woman brings a beautiful caftan to the shop of Halim and Mina in one of Morocco's oldest medinas.

It’s a stunning piece of craftsmanship she was gifted at the birth of her eldest child but the decades have taken their toll on a small section of the stitching.

The camera closes in on the garment’s gorgeous golden detail as Halim wistfully tells the woman that the classical sewing technique that might restore her sartorial heirloom has been lost to the past. Still, Halim will mend what he can to save the caftan for future generations.

"Using the handmade construction of the eponymous garment as a time frame, the Moroccan filmmaker tenderly articulates the conflict between tradition and modernity, desire, love and duty"

Preservation, and what we must do to survive, is the thematic thread tying Maryam Touzani’s sophomore feature as a director together.

Using the handmade construction of the eponymous garment as a time frame, the Moroccan filmmaker tenderly articulates the conflict between tradition and modernity, desire, love and duty, through the aforementioned married couple and the young apprentice they hire to help meet customer demand.

In a sensitively restrained performance, that has me once again wondering why Saleh Bakri isn’t an international name, the Palestinian actor painfully embodies a man in hiding.

Unloved by the father who taught him the trade, Halim inherited his shop and is now one of the few maalem (master tailor) keeping the hand-sewn art form alive.

He’s a man of few words but his wife Mina, played by Lubna Azabal, has more than enough for them both and isn’t afraid to wield them when pushy customers make unrealistic demands. “My husband is a maalem, not a machine,” she claps back at one such patron bemoaning the speed at which he is making the titular caftan.

The two actors share an intimacy that speaks volume to the devotion this long-married couple have for each other; they’re best friends who have helped each other survive for 25 years as the moral rigidity of Moroccan life stiffens. The arrival of young Youssef (Ayoub Missioui), however, creates a romantic tension that neither can ignore.

Halim is a closeted gay man in a country where homosexuality is illegal and punishable by imprisonment. He acts on his sexual desires at the local hammam with strangers in private cubicles but a cloud of shame hangs over him before and after each tryst behind a closed door.

Bakri emotes sadness and guilt with every wrinkle on his handsome face. Every close-up of his striking blue eyes suggests he’s almost always on the verge of crying which is especially heart-breaking to witness in a bedroom scene when Mina initiates sex.

Explicit scenes are few but sensuality is woven into the audio-visual fabric of this narrative.

Composer Kristian Eidnes Andersen provides an elegant score as the camera frames hands stroking silky textiles, scissors cutting materials and fingers delicately stitching designs while Halim and Youssef glance at each other while they work.

Mina is watching too; Azabal’s sharp gaze is loaded with such powerful subtext that it’s hard not to be in her corner even when her anger gets the better of her. That anger isn’t just about the growing bond between her husband and this young man but a personal health crisis forcing her to confront her own mortality.

It’s a stirring, generous performance from the actress and the patient pacing of the film allows the character journeys she and Bakri go on to unfold without rushing revelations.

Touzani’s powerful direction gives these outstanding performers time to engage with each other in scenes where dialogue is sparse but space is needed to process a change in emotion. The Blue Caftan is a gracefully-designed film without judgment. Only hope for a future where the beauty of the past can coexist with the ideals of the present.

Hanna Flint is a film and TV critic, writer and author of Strong Female Character with bylines at Empire, Time Out, Elle, Town & Country, the Guardian, BBC Culture and IGN.

Follow her here: @HannaFlint