Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo

No filmmaker has ever loved anything as much as Abdellatif Kechiche loves butts.

While it’s important to have seen Canto Uno in order to savour Intermezzo, this film in itself doesn’t seem remotely essential.

A baffling passion project whose cruelly protracted runtime is eclipsed only by the monumentally tedious way it fills it.

Vacuous, almost spitefully monotonous ... A dismaying creative dead end from an abundantly gifted filmmaker, the new film escalates its predecessor’s cheeky protest to a form of acute auteur trolling.

Beyond being tiresome, Intermezzo is just plain ugly, with seemingly little care given to the image — odd, perhaps, given that the film is so clearly and confrontationally about its own director’s gaze.

Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo begins to feel like a human rights violation ... It’s almost impossible to stress how unpleasant this moviegoing experience was, to the point where it’s difficult to imagine a human being making this movie and considering it art.

It is not just a tough sit; it is nearly impossible to get through.