‘Love in Slow Motion’ Review: A Kuwaiti Rom-Com That Knows Exactly How Long a Silence Can Last

Netflix has been steadily building out its slate of Arabic language romantic comedies, and ‘Love in Slow Motion’ arrives as the third rom-com collaboration between the streamer and Eagle Films. Directed by Elie El Semaan and led by Kuwaiti star Nour Al Ghandour opposite Ali Kakooli, the film premiered globally on July 23, 2026, and runs a tidy ninety one minutes.

The setup is one romantic comedy fans have seen dozens of times before. Haya and Jawad have been inseparable best friends for years, close enough that neither one has ever had to define what they actually are to each other. Just as Haya finally works up the nerve to say what she has been feeling, Jawad announces his engagement to Zeina, a well known actress played by Noha Nabil, and Haya’s quiet plan collapses before she can even open her mouth.

What surprised me watching ‘Love in Slow Motion’ is how little interest it has in rushing past that gut punch moment. The film lets Haya sit in the discomfort of bad timing rather than immediately pivoting into scheming, and that patience pays off. Nour Al Ghandour plays Haya with a kind of practiced brightness that keeps slipping, just slightly, whenever the camera lingers a beat too long, and that gap between the face Haya shows Jawad and the one she shows herself is where the movie actually lives.

Ali Kakooli’s Jawad could easily have been written as a simple obstacle, but the film resists making him a villain or even particularly dense. He is comfortable, which is its own quiet problem, and Kakooli plays that comfort as something almost tender rather than cruel. Noha Nabil gets less to chew on as Zeina, though I appreciated that the script never turns her into a punchline or an obstacle to be dismantled, she is simply a woman who said yes to a man who never fully let go of someone else.

Where ‘Love in Slow Motion’ stumbles is in its second act, when the plot leans on a familiar campaign of grand gestures and near misses to manufacture urgency the characters have already earned honestly. I found myself wishing the film trusted its own quieter instincts a little more instead of reaching for genre shorthand once the emotional groundwork was already laid. It is the difference between a film that understands why this premise keeps getting made and one that occasionally forgets its own good sense in the rush toward a satisfying finish.

Nour Al Ghandour has spoken about what she sees as Jawad’s central flaw, telling Milleworld that he spent too much time searching for indirect ways to reach Haya instead of simply being honest with her. That observation lines up with what actually works best in the film, the moments where characters choose evasion over clarity and pay for it in real time, long before any grand gesture arrives to smooth things over.

Visually, the film is unfussy in a way that suits its tone, favoring warm interiors and lived in spaces over glossy production design, which gives the central friendship a believability that a shinier movie might have sacrificed. The comedy lands more often than not, built on the specific rhythms of two people who have spent years finishing each other’s sentences, and even when the plotting wobbles, the chemistry between the two leads is strong enough to carry the film through its weaker stretches.

‘Love in Slow Motion’ is a warm, well acted romantic comedy that understands its characters far better than it trusts its own plot mechanics, and that imbalance keeps it from being something special even as it remains genuinely enjoyable. Nour Al Ghandour and Ali Kakooli make the central friendship feel real enough that I forgave the film its more predictable detours, and the result is a rom-com that earns its ending rather than simply arriving at it. I give it a final 8 out of 10.

Have you watched ‘Love in Slow Motion’ yet, and does Haya and Jawad’s slow burn work for you or does the back half lose you the way it nearly lost me? Let me know in the comments.