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05.06.2022 - 15:41 / variety.com
Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticIt’s no secret that Morocco is one of the most homophobic places on earth, punishing certain acts with prison sentences of up to three years. The secret, as far as Maryam Touzani’s “The Blue Caftan” is concerned, is that its main character is homosexual. The man, Halim (Salem Bakri), is devoted to both his religion and his wife, Mina (“Incendies” star Lubna Azabal).
Together they own an old-fashioned garment shop in the town’s medina, where such stories almost certainly exist. Still, it takes equal measures of audacity and sensitivity to portray them on screen, especially from a woman’s point of view.Halim works as a maalem, or master tailor, struggling to keep the trade alive. These days, machines accomplish the work that artisans like Halim once did by hand, and apprentices are hard to find.
Much of the film is dedicated to this disappearing craft: Touzani (“Adam”) admires the care with which Halim sews the embroidery to the hem of a caftan, featuring shots of characters preparing the thread, testing the fabrics and so on. These sensual details evoke the sensation of touch, taking the place of the more explicit scenes found in so many LGBT-themed art-house movies. While “The Blue Caftan” is hardly chaste, it’s tastefully restrained — too much so at times, to the extent that the slow and understated movie overstays its welcome by almost half an hour.
Audiences are meant to identify with Halim, who has been forced to repress his true identity all these years. But the film’s most empathetic character is arguably the wife, whom Azabal imbues with more layers than the screenplay suggests. Thus, we think of her feelings even in scenes when Mina remains off-screen — as when Halim slinks away to
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“ where Tom Cruise trains a new generation of pilots — also starred in “War Dogs”with Jonah Hill. In the “War Dogs” film, Teller and Hill play two arms dealers contracted by the US government to provide weapons to the Afghan army. Teller’s character lives in the penthouse, which is on the 55th floor of Marina Blue, at 888 Biscayne Blvd. The four bedroom, four bath unit is 4,498 square feet and features a corner living room that boasts 20-foot, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Biscayne Bay and downtown Miami’s skyline. There’s also three balconies, two living rooms, a dining room, an open chef’s kitchen and four parking spaces. It first went on the market for $5.49 million in 2016. The seller is Alain Berdouare — brother of Chicken Kitchen founder Christian de Berdouare — who bought it for $1.73 million in 2008, when the building first launched.Alain, who also sold a $10 million home on Florida’s Venetian Islands for $10 million in 2017, was repped by ONE Sotheby’s International Realty brokers Mirce Curkoski and Albert Justo, while the buyer was represented by Kevin Kavanaugh of Associates Realty.Alain’s brother Christian was in the news in 2020 for selling his Miami mansion, once owned by drug dealer Pablo Escobar, for $11 million.
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