Product Description

Studio: Wolfe Video Release Date: 05/27/2008 Run time: 85 minutes Rating: Nr

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #67909 in DVD
• Brand: Beach
• Released on: 2005-06-28
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: Arabic, English, French
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 83 minutes

Customer Reviews

Beautiful scenery and actors, weak story line
This film is a very mixed product. I will first identify the strenghts of the film and then identify the weaknesses.

A first strength is the sunny stark beauty of the Morroccan landscape and the dark beautiful people. The film is full of male and female North African beauties in a wonderful Mediterranean landscape with turquoise oceans and white rocky cliffs. The film gives the viewer a sense of place so that you really feel that this is an accurate view of North African Morrocco, with its hillside archtecture and older model cars.

A second strength is the acting from the three main young actors. Ouassini Embarek plays a young male who befriends a reclusive cafe owner, played by Jacques Nolot. The two young women in the film however are excellent actresses, both of whom love Driss, the handsome young protagonist of the film.

The primary weakness is the bleak minimal storyline based on a Paul Bowles short story. I love Paul Bowles but this short story was insufficient to carry an 83 minute film. Basically a young man befriends a reclusive rough owner of a broken down beach cafe. The man is gruff and rude. The young man recieves over four warnings that the man is dangerous. First a fisherman warms him that Foaud has a bad character. Then the boy meets Foaud's three wild sons who also warn him that their father is a dangerous man. Then Driss asks his girlfriend to accompany him to the cafe where Foaud tries to seduce the girl away from Driss as well as talks bad about Driss while he fishes. Then Driss takes another girl friend to the cafe where the same thing happens. Then Driss visits the cafe at night and find that it is a spot where prostitutes have sex with customers which is the real way Foaud supports himself. Driss runs away with one of the women who is very taken with Driss's good looks. Driss does not touch her sexually and rejects her advances. The story ends with Foaud implying that Driss is homosexual which accounts for his rejection of the female prostitutes as well as his attraction to Foaud.

The film ends with Driss replying that he is not gay and that he befriended Foaud because he wanted to prove to himself that he could change a person with a bad character. This excuse did not ring with authenticity.

Beautiful scenery and young actors, good acting, yet a too thin story line did not combine to rank more than 3 stars.

Mohammed Mrabet not Paul Bowles
The book that this film was apparently based on was called "The Beach Cafe" by Mohammed Mrabet, not Paul Bowles. Bowles translated Mrabet for years but did not write for him. (Mrabet didn't write but was an oral storyteller). I haven't seen the film but acted in the original story.

faithful to the original story
This 93 minute drama, set in morocco, follows very closely mohammed mrabet's original story. The director has chosen not to heighten things in any way. The story was a transcription of an oral performance so the film, being visual, is inevitably more fleshed out but the moroccan actors, while good in front of the camera, have not been goaded to bring any of the verve and dynamism of their culture to the screen. It's as if they are pretending to be french (they speak almost entirely in french as well) and sedated frenchmen at that. For some reason one of the main actors is a frenchman playing a moroccan (he's the only one) and he isn't very good but as he is an experienced actor it is probably the director's fault. It must be hard to get a handle on a character if you're told to do nothing. Ninety minutes in the zoco chico of tangier might provide more drama than this. Strange that a french film goes direct to video in the u.s.a. and is available only as an import in its country of origin. With english subtitles.