Mediterranean fever is a strange disease. A devious evil, inscribed in the genes of the populations surrounding the Great Blue, manifested by periodic crises. A metaphorical fever, which will hold under its yoke its two main protagonists, Walid and Jalal, which everything opposes but which will nevertheless be united forever.
Palestinian depression
Haifa, a coastal town in northern Israel with a strong Palestinian Arab community, is inhabited by these two men who will find something else to survive. Walid nourishes his appetite as a writer of the gangsters of Jalal, his neighbour. Jalal discovers in Walid an attentive ear, a friend to occupy his long days as a man at home. This is the basic premise of this Mediterranean fever.
The empty image?
A film that offers nothing, visually. Nothing or almost anything. The image is always a nod below what it tells, as if it were afraid of parasitizing history. The sound almost always weakened, to make dialogues audible. Music, almost completely absent or then intra-diegetic.
One could almost accuse the film of a poverty of staging, but it is nothing. The image, while restrained, conveys the message of the feature film. Subtly integrates. The confinement of the two men, their respective impotence, the focus on speech which seems to be the last thing they have: speech and violence. For lazy wanderings or daily apathy only surging the alive of a vermilion blood smearing a hand, the sudden sound of a gunshot or the cold threat placed on display. A sudden, brutal violence, emerging as Raymond's blood flows in Foreign Camus, before disappearing again, to bury himself in this dusty earth that seems to incubate it. Until the next crisis. Until the next fever.
In the mouth of the wolf
An impulse of anger, inevitable but unsuccessful. The hemoglobin is sinking, but will flow a hundredfold back. Then there is only one forced existence possible. Forced statism. An occupation – Sic! – of which they are victims (a mental occupation for Walid and his irremediable depression, an occupation in the form of mental charge for Jalal and his multiple debts). Then, when even claiming will not suffice, when even speaking, writing, laughing yellow will not suffice, then the ball remains. And the last shot!
Mediterranean fever skillfully manipulates the metaphor (the history of the Palestinian people) without stifling its history (its two « hero »), questions the taboo of suicide in a society that denies it, manages to break gender stereotypes in a yet ultra-conservative carcan. A film that also questions humour – very black, please – and its political consequences. In short, this second film for Maha Haj, which had already proposed its Personal Affairs In 2016, the director's name is now on the list of filmmakers to follow.
Data sheet
DVD Zone B (France)
Publisher: Blaq Out
Duration: 105 min
Release date: 16 May 2023
Video format : 576p/25 - 1.85
Soundtrack Multilingual (Arabic, Hebrew, English) Dolby Digital 5.1 (and 2.0)
Subtitles French
[...] that the staging struggles to keep up with his words. Neither erased (we talked for Mediterranean Fever about a staging always left in the background of his dialogues so as not to parasite [...]