A Tale of Love and Desire

The hot flush of first love sizzles through Leyla Bouzid’s assured and seductive sophomore feature. While the spark between fellow literature students Ahmed and Farah is instant, their courtship is thorny. Farah exudes curiosity, embracing the freedom and opportunity of studying in a new city. But for Paris-born Ahmed, the prestigious Sorbonne is a disorientatingly foreign world to the banlieue he grew up in. He is further hardened by the dissonance of discovering erotic Arab literature in these surroundings. Between the lines of literary classics, their worlds slowly begin to merge. Bouzid deftly plays with the clichés of courtship and identity politics in this tale of young love, celebrating passion, poetry and desire.

Elhum Shakerifar