This tender and sad drama should come with the opposite of a content warning: a reassuring note at the start to explain that no physical harm or public humiliation will come to the gay men whose story we are about to watch. It’s set in Morocco where homosexuality is a criminal offence, and for the first half an hour I assumed the emotional brace position, convinced it would end in arrest or worse for its lead character. But instead, the film’s director Maryam Touzani had put together a gentle, complex film: a love story between a gay man and his wife.
Ridiculously good-looking Palestinian actor Saleh Bakri’s handsome face is hidden away behind a caterpillar-like moustache to play Halim, a master tailor who makes hand-embroidered women’s caftans. Like Daniel Day-Lewis’s couturier in Phantom Thread, Halim is an obsessive artist, refusing to use a sewing machine and infuriating his rich customers by keeping them waiting for his masterpieces. His elegant wife Mina (Lubna Azabal) runs front of shop.
The couple have been married for 25 years; they don’t have children. Halim is gay and cruises at the hammam. His wife Mina knows about his sexuality, and at first, the couple’s marriage looks polite, almost like a performance of a happy couple. But as the movie progresses their intimacy is revealed in rich, novelistic scenes of ordinary life. In a different country, at another time, they would not choose to be together, but here and now, they are the great love of each other’s lives.
A love triangle (of sorts) begins when Mina becomes unwell and Halim hires an apprentice, Youssef (Ayoub Missioui). But even this storyline develops in ways that are unexpected. At times I wondered if the film is a bit too tasteful and tactful about the pain that Halim and Mina have to suppress, but still it’s a hugely compassionate and emotionally satisfying movie.
• The Blue Caftan is released on 5 May in UK cinemas, and 18 May in Australia.
