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When Karim's (Fahd Larhzaoui) father Abbas (Slimane Dazi) finds out Karim's gay, that comes like a major shock, not only for his own beliefs, but also if found out this could create a scandal in the Moroccan community of Amsterdam the family is a part of. What's worse, when Karim's mother Fatima (Lubna Azabal) is told, she wants to just break contact with Karim, but for Karim that's not good enough, so he locks himself into the closet under the stairs in his family home, turns off the water, the modem, cuts the TV cable and finally turns off electricity, only to force his parents - and later also his narrow minded brother Redouan (Sabri Saddik) to talk things over. However, things are not as black and white as Karim at first thinks they are, as while sitting it out in the closet he starts to remember what a journey it was for him to admit to himself he's gay, how he wasn't there for his friend Soufian (Nasrdin Dchar) when he came out, how he lied to his girlfriend (Britte Lagcher), and how for the longest time he tried to keep his boyfriend (Emmanuel Ohene Boafo) a secret from everyone ...

Films about coming (in whatever culture) out are oftentimes a hard sell as they tend to carry their message too much on their sleeves, tend to be self-righteous and smother all artfulness with the issues to tackle - and El Houb - The Love goes a whole different route though, from the mere idea to lock the protagonist into a closet to a conscious choice for magical realism where Karim's allowed to go back in time and interact with his memories, plus by giving Karim much more depth than just being gay makes the film a very interesting character study and him a very relatable character regardless of one's own sexual orientation. And a rather stylish directorial effort and strong cast only help making this a pretty enjoyable movie.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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