The secret of writing in Morocco

Lonely Planet was produced by Netflix in 2024Lonely Planet was produced by Netflix in 2024
Writer Paul Bowles slips into the atmosphere of this film alongside novelist William Burroughs, poet Allen Ginsberg, playwright Tennessee Williams, and Jean Genet—without any mention of how they lived the Moroccan literary dream. They also sneak into the viewer’s memory simply because they once wrote in Morocco.

It’s a flicker of a glowing lamp, lit by Moroccan cities in the memory of language, granting it more imagination. We must live vicariously through actress Laura Dern in her role in Lonely Planet, where she plays novelist Catherine, invited to a retreat in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, hoping to break her writer’s block and finish her long-delayed novel.

The secret lies in Morocco’s decades-long allure for great writers—for writing alone. In this film, a group of Western novelists gather, hoping for a space that frees them from the shackles of their urban neuroses and loosens the curse of language when it resists taming.

But instead, Catherine meets the handsome Owen (Liam Hemsworth), a real estate investor whose phone never stops ringing due to the time difference between New York and Fez. Owen arrives with his girlfriend Lily (Diana Silvers), who hopes to write her second novel—trusting that Morocco’s cities alone can tame her language.

Susannah Grant, writer and -dir-ector of Lonely Planet, allows us a glimpse of skepticism about Owen’s questionable investment practices. Yet we drift with him into love for Catherine, especially after Lily’s foolish betrayal with Libyan novelist Rafi Abdo (Younes Boucif), who pens memoirs of his days as a young soldier in Libya—evoking something of Hisham Matar’s literary spirit. Abdo is at the Fez retreat working on a new book.

Thus, we witness Catherine’s heart gradually opening to romantic possibilities, her mind clearing for a new novel where Owen is present. When she warns him—“Boy, don’t fall in love”—during his first attempt to kiss her, with a twenty-year age gap between them, was she warning him—or herself?

This film is rich with literary references that lend elegance to the language of writing. It’s not a high-budget production, yet it’s worthy of its charming romantic pleasure and its dreamy premise: that an unexpected love story might await you after an unexpected journey to a Moroccan retreat that gathers the world’s great writers for the arduous task of taming language they cannot find in their own cities.

Dern offers the melancholic insight the -script- attempts to convey, though she cannot fully summon it. She sharply portrays someone gradually abandoning herself, surrendering to a moment of love despite the caution she’s earned.

Still, we understand Catherine’s passion—creatively successful yet personally shattered. Here is someone entirely different from those in her literary circles: simple, kind, open to deep conversation. Though uninterested in books.

The film, produced by Netflix in 2024, unfolds exactly as one might expect—but this formula is popular for good reason. Such fantasies can satisfy the viewer’s longing.

Lonely Planet returns the Arab viewer to Morocco, while offering Western audiences a spontaneous image of Moroccan families and their lavish generosity toward strangers who enter their modest homes by sheer coincidence.

I wonder—what kind of “Bare Bread” would Mohamed Choukri speak of, had he been among the writers of Lonely Planet?

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