On demand: "The Blue Caftan"

From its opening exploration of a rippling expanse of royal blue silk being readied for tailoring by a masterly pair of hands, the enveloping Moroccan drama The Blue Caftan suggests a version of Phantom Thread with fewer eccentricities and altogether greater heart and warmth. Co-writer/director Maryam Touzani films two simultaneous crises in a small, husband-and-wife-run tailor's shop in downtown Salé. The first is professional: too much work has led ailing, devout Mina (Lubna Azabal) and her other half Halim (Saleh Bakri) to hire a handsome young apprentice, Youssef (Ayoub Missioui), to help out around the place. This Youssef does, but he also brings about a personal crisis. Mina, who may or may not have been aware of Halim's bisexual leanings when she entered into matrimony, can only observe the growing closeness between her man and this new recruit: the steering hand placed on the apprentice's scissors, the breath on the back of the neck. As these three begin to pull and push one another - and the commemorative commission of the title takes shape - we observe closely linked relationships stretching and straining like cloth, with the constant threat of tearing. The film's theme is alteration in all its forms, how - despite all the tradition in the world (and in the tailoring world specifically) - things do still sometimes change: waistlines, loyalties, materials, prognoses, attachments, desires.

What that gives rise to is a minor miracle of nuanced, layered screenwriting. Every other line here folds back onto itself, thickens with meaning and suggestion. Even when talking about buttons and grommets, these coworkers seem to be talking about themselves, and what catches their eye; much goes unspoken, but somehow a lot is conveyed. Somewhere in the background, Touzani seeds an idea about the accelerated pace of modern life - so much work, so little time - and how it limits our means of recovery. (It feels an especially resonant film to encounter as we disentangle ourselves from Covid and enter the brave new world of our tech-bro profiteers.) By contrast, The Blue Caftan stands resolute as a slow burn, an exemplar of judicious, measured craft. The small space of the shop forces the actors together, as it does customers and staff; the result is an astonishingly tactile film, full of expressive framing and gestures. You'll remember the close-ups of hands, picking fruit, smoothing down, reaching out. You'll remember the Vermeer-like still lives this camera captures in passing, the quality of light in the workshop and the couple's home. Most of all, you'll remember these actors: the yearning, smouldering Azabal, whose Mina only ever seems one smile away from a happier life; the upright, noble, Firth-ish Bakri, whose Halim knows the trouble he's causing Mina and loves her anyway; the no less sensitive Missioui, unaware of the behind-the-shutters turmoil he's caused, determined not to be anybody's plaything. It's rare to encounter a drama whose characters are so determined to do the right thing by others, even if it means denying and hurting themselves. Touzani doesn't want these innately good people to fall out of one another's good graces. We don't, either. But sometimes time passes; sometimes things change.

The Blue Caftan is available on DVD through New Wave Films, and to rent via Prime Video, Curzon Home Cinema, the BFI Player and YouTube.