An oasis of flowers, palms and fruit seemingly sheltered from the chaos of the world provides the backdrop to the romantic, family drama, The Roses of Marrakesh, Ginevra Elkann’s third feature which was unveiled in recent days at the Festival do Rio (Rio de Janeiro International Film Festival) and is set to screen at the upcoming Rome Film Fest. In the Palmeraie of Marrakech, at the centre of this suspended universe are Leila (Nisrin Erradi) and Madame Isabelle (Fanny Ardant), who are worlds apart in age, class and origin, yet united by a loneliness which daily routines and the beauty of the location can only conceal temporarily. Written by Elkann together with Babak Jalali and Chiara Barzini, the film works through subtraction, using gestures, silences and details to bring to light what the characters cannot say.

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It’s precisely through the ritual nature of these gestures that the film begins to tell Leila’s story, almost in the form of a maid’s diary. She moves with precision in Isabelle’s large house: she serves, tidies up and anticipates her employer’s wishes. The estate is a perfectly organised microcosm where everything has its place. Isabelle - an elderly, ailing French aristocrat - rules this universe with the same stubbornness with which she tends to her garden: “Details matter; they are what distinguish civilisation from chaos,” she insists.

Behind this perfection, however, hides profound solitude. Isabelle waits in vain for her daughter and grandchildren who live in France, while Leila, always at her side, gradually becomes something more than a maid: an affectionate, complicit and nigh-on maternal bond blossoms between them. The balance wavers when Leila’s sister, Miriam (Jalila Talemsi), resurfaces from her past to talk to her about the son Leila had at the age of 15. The boy, raised by Miriam, is now an adult and about to get married: he needs money. “You live in a palace now,” her sister reminds her, summing up in a few words the distance that has opened up between them.

From that moment on, the two women’s stories end up mirroring one another. Isabelle waits for a daughter who never arrives, while Leila must face up to the son she abandoned. The garden is where this tension takes shape. Simone D'Arcangelo’s camera lingers on flowers, fruit, palms and animals, immersing the viewer in a sensual oasis, accompanied by Fabio Massimo Capogrosso’s score. Isabelle insists on cultivating a variety of rose which is ill-suited to the setting: “Some things don’t grow where we want them to.” In this sense, the garden becomes a metaphor for an order stubbornly built upon something uncontrollable.

Elkann entrusts much of the film to the leads’ ability to hold back their emotions: the camera lingers on Erradi’s face, on the tension between the restraint of her movements and the risk of something breaking through. Ardant depicts Isabelle as both imperious and vulnerable, her obstinacy gradually giving way to her fear of dying without having laid certain things to rest.

Consequently, the relationship between the two women is central to the film: it’s a connection that transcends social distance and professional ties to become the mirror of two lives marked by separation from their children. Alongside them, Yusef (Ahmed Hammoud), the gardener, offers Leila the possibility of a different kind of feeling, composed of glances, attentiveness and closeness. But this relationship, too, remains understated. Love, in The Roses of Marrakesh, isn’t something that explodes: it’s something to be cultivated, like a flower.

The Roses of Marrakesh was produced by Asmara Films with Rai Cinema, and by Agora Films and Tessalit Productions (France). International sales are handled by True Colours.