"HABIBA" Love in Casablanca at the time of Covid.

Directed by Hassan Benjelloun

Strikingly honest in its emotions, Habiba (presented at the recent Luxor African Film Festival) brings a vivid love story on the screen.

Habiba failed her entry exams and, ashamed to go back to her rural village, decided to stay in Casablanca. She finds work in a factory, but then the pandemic starts, and she is no longer able to return to her family home as the buses have abruptly stopped working. She knocks to the door of her only acquaintance, her blind music teacher, Fettah, who offers her shelter. They start to share his flat as two perfect strangers.

The script is fluid, capturing visually delicate emotions, and entering unpredictable territories. The blind teacher with his music, his books, slowly seduces Habiba. She is fascinated by his world, and he too is fascinated by her. In Casablanca, an iconic place of love of the Hollywood’s mythology, love sparkles in a new direction. The unseen, that is the world of feelings, is wonderfully captured. The Moroccan filmmaker Hassan Benjelloun reinvents the love story. These are two ordinary individuals: she is not beautiful as a Hollywood actress, nor super smart, but slowly she conquers the little word of the flat. Far from the physical love, and the attraction, of Hollywood aesthetics here everything becomes symbolic and divine. Habiba at first feels safe, as her host is blinds, but soon she finds out that he is married with a daughter, his wife left him, unable to accept his disability. He is a man that can be loved and can love. And love soon starts. Habiba loves his books, his music, his manners, his elegant apartment and his dinner codes. However, when emotions erupt, Habiba decides to leave the flat to go back to her village. And here the story takes a romantic turn. The Casablanca of the Hollywood classic fades, to be replaced by the romantic love of a blind man that make the impossible possible for her love, everything is authentic, including the limits of the disability. A modern love story of Morocco emerges, strong and authentic. The two performances are excellent. The actor who plays the music teacher brings charms and sensuality into the story as much as the girl brings fragility and insecurity. With a whimsical eye for details, the sheer creativity with which the film is put together is remarkable. A perfectly poignant romantic tale about courage to love and change the self-breaking with society’s preconceived behaviours. Tense and exciting as it is absorbing, it is gripping from first to last.

by Rita Di Santo