Avis des critiques

Where does this leave the titular Maya? Her story is slight, her agency constantly cast in shadow until Gabriel’s need to re-establish himself as a man of the world finally annihilates her very existence.

The slack, somewhat eventless, aimless quality of most of the film is what is required for a person with such a job, or has gone through something so horrible, to re-charge, to come to himself. The problem is, that person hardly seems one of note; and without his scarring backstory, it might even be easy to dislike someone like this and the casual, vaguely exploitative tourism upon which they rely.

Even when the expected romance does blossom late in the film, various narrative details (Maya’s wealthy family background, her own studies abroad) minimize the potential power games and cultural imbalance that the basic set-up might suggest, and thus place Maya not alongside, but in opposition to something like Jacques Doillon’s Raja (2003).

While so much of the runtime feels slight, in comparison with the rest of her output, the ending synthesises all that has come before and delivers an emotional climax that defies rational comprehension.

It's got unexpectedly strange energy, does a number of things Hansen-Løve hasn’t done before and pushes itself continually. The results strain cohesion, but I have no problem with ambitious excess as opposed to staying drily on-task.