Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

Pluskylang Great Film overall

Plustown A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

amit agarwal So how much do diapers cost? And what will be the cost of diapers for say a 2 year period till a child gets potty trained? And do the diaper manufacturers not ill serve mothers by making them so dry and absorbent that the kids refuse to start appreciating the alternative?And yes they serve as great shock absorbers when kids take a tumble.Calculators are pulled out and the math is done, 7200 Euros for one year, it emerges, a small fortune for struggling immigrants. All this detailed discussion is just one tiny piece from this big film directed by the emerging French auteur Abdellatif Kechiche.The discussion is happening at a Sunday family lunch in the home of a Tunisian immigrant family in a small port city in southern France.Everybody is there, the three daughters, their husbands,children,two brothers and the formidable mother who has prepared her signature dish, fish couscous, except for the father. In a world becoming stubbornly cosmopolitan and westernized the scene of the family eating the couscous noisily, messily and with great relish is heartening. We see the father a little later as his two sons arrive at his squalid hotel room to give him a take away portion.He eats this with a quiet satisfaction. Rym(Hafsia Herzi),who is the young vivacious daughter of the beautiful middle-aged owner of the hotel with whom the father Slimane(Habib Boufares ) is having a relationship, which perhaps divided his family, shares the meal.The film centers around the efforts of an old and out of work Slimane to convert a rusty decrepit boat into a speciality couscous restaurant.In his efforts he will receive extraordinary support from both his families and many friends.At he heart of the moral dialogue in the film is the profound decency of Slimane, his doggedness, his complete understanding of the compromises involved in being a struggling immigrant and his steadfast adherence to his duty.He knows his limitations and makes his life useful to his family at an old age, in ways that they acknowledge, when the easy thing for them would have been to sideline him from their lives.His daughters adore him and rally around him in his hard times.They clearly have theirs hearts in the right place.We see his first wife walking quite a distance to give a plate of the couscous to a homeless man.It reminded me of the custom in many Indian homes to reserve the first chapatti (indian Bread) for a cow and the last one for stray dogs. As a kid I was terrified of this chore of taking the chapattis to the stray animals but looking back I see it as a custom which built in compassion for animals in our daily life.The acting which is uniformly superb by the leads Habib Boufares and Hafsia Herzi, as well as the supporting cast, is a collage of neorealist, formalist and melodramatic elements. Rym played the sensational Hefsia Herzi is the real surprise in the film.Her devotion to her mothers old companion, whom she treats with love and respect, and the lengths to which both her character and Ms Herzi go, bring immense joy to the film.Perhaps its her love which provides Slimane with the strength to pursue his dream of opening a restaurant on a boat.In the extraordinarily detailed final sequence we see a performance of very sensuous belly dancing by the nubile Rym, as she tries desperately to hold the attention of the irritated restaurant guests who are tired of waiting for the main dish of couscous.As she performs the musicians who are mostly old men who stay at her mothers hotel, play for her as they would for a professional. This is also an interesting take on how old men look at young women who are obviously sexually attractive, this scene provides a very civilized and dignified answer.The film has many long and fully fleshed out scenes, all of which are spectacular in themselves but when they are strung together in a film of this length, it begins to wear us down a bit.The film is raw – in content , tone, texture, performances, dialogue,locations and its use of a fluid hand-held digital camera format.Inside its rawness it hides pleasures as wholesome and nutritious as the fish couscous that lends the film its title, but I am afraid this film will end up dividing the audiences into those who completely immerse themselves in its voluptuousness and those who wish for a more economical and smooth treatment of this fertile material.Surely the director is aware of the perils of his strategy of not holding back, of showing us exactly what he wants to, and this makes this a very brave film.The film is set in Sete, a slightly rundown but beautiful port city in southern France, that I used to make business trips to. Watching this film brought back pleasant memories of the Mediterranean sea that provides a constant backdrop to the film.The sea is what both separates and links Europe and Africa, historically the oppressor and the oppressed.Does Mr Kechiche want to convey this group of immigrants as being the representative samples of the North African immigrants? We do not know. But as an intimate case study it will serve as an important artistic marker in Frances struggle to come to terms with its colonial past and the needs of a modern French society, in a post 9/11 world, to banish symbols of conservative Islamic beliefs such as the headscarf.Cinema cannot offer solutions, just mirrors, and this film is a finely embellished one.First published on my blog mostlycinema.com

Howard Schumann Tunisian born French director Abdellatif Kechiche's third feature Secret of the Grain is dedicated to his father whose silence after a long day of hard work reflects the demeanor of the film's lead protagonist, Slimane Beiji (Habib Boufares), a Tunisian immigrant who has been laid off from his job in the shipyards after thirty five years. Winner of best picture, director, screen play and actress awards at the 2008 Cesar Awards, the film is not a Loach-type work of social consciousness but a rich, varied, multi-layered family drama that is universal in its appeal. Although the English title of the film suggests there is some secret held by the grain, the only secret in Secret of the Grain is how Kechiche manages to seamlessly weld together into a cohesive whole such disparate elements as the traditions of great cooking, the problems immigrants confront when dealing with white authority, and the desire to leave a legacy to your children.Set in the French coastal village of Séte on the Mediterranean, the grain in the title refers to couscous, a diet staple of Tunisian immigrants and a dish that Slimane hopes to use to turn a dilapidated old boat into a profitable restaurant with his ex-wife Souad (Bouraouia Marzouk) doing the cooking. Shot with a hand-held camera that bobs and weaves through long takes of eating, animated dinner conversations, and emotional family disputes, the 151-minute Secret of the Grain has the authenticity you would expect if you accidentally stumbled into a Greek restaurant where an animated family dinner was taking place. In a scene at one of the two family dinners that take up half of the film, the length and variety of facial close-ups of people chewing, laughing, and talking in multi-cultural accents is staggering.The centerpiece of the film is Slimane and his clan consisting of his two sons, five daughters, grandchildren, his ex-wife Souad, his lover Latifa (Hatika Karaoui), and her fiery twenty-year-old daughter Rym (Hafsia Herzi) who adores Slimane and whose energy and business acumen is the catalyst for his risky venture. Slimane, a man of sixty-one whose periods of silence stand in sharp contrast to the loquaciousness of his family, lives in a modest room in a weather-beaten hotel run by Latifa. A generous man, Slimane collects fish from his fisherman friends and delivers them each week to Souad, his older daughter Karima (Faridah Benkhetache); and Latifa.The first hour delves into mundane family matters. When Slimane visits his eldest daughter Karima (Farida Benkhetache) to deliver some fish, Karima's anger at her three year-old daughter who refuses the potty dominates the conversation which continues for almost ten minutes interspersed with comments about the decline of the shipping industry. Other extended domestic scenes revolve around the escapades of Slimane's irresponsible son Majid (Sami Zitouni) whose extra-marital affairs threaten to drive his Russian wife Julia (Alice Houri) out of the family. The idea of starting a restaurant at age sixty-one raises much skepticism in the community and Slimane's plans are considered too thin and too unsupported by economic reality by the bank he asks for a loan.To prove the worth of his idea, however, Slimane invites one hundred city officials, potential investors, friends and family to the boat that he, Rym, and his son Riadh (Mohamed Benabdeslem) painstakingly renovated. The opening night turns out to be an astonishing tour de force that combines life-affirming exuberance, sensual music and belly dancing, and an avoidable crisis that leads to heightened family tension and a suspenseful final half hour. Kechiche, a former movie and TV actor, has assembled an outstanding ensemble cast with first rate performances, especially from Boufares and Herzi. Though the film has many discussions about food, it is not a feel-good "food movie" but a complex, deeply intense narrative that elevates one family's personal struggles into a drama of epic scope.

yamenj-1 Last week i went to see the movie La Graine et Le mullet. The movie started with close shots on the faces , which is good as a start in some movies especially the movies that emphasize family values but, it sticked to the faces as in porno movies to the level that you feel that your space perception is already invaded and you feel uncomfortable. Personally I felt like I wanted to go back to the last seat-line in the cinema just to be as far as possible from these annoying shouting characters who, obviously, and despite the good acting, succeeded to make me angry and feel like I wanted to shout back at them loudly, Heck off ! Why ,for god's sake, to repeat the word Couscous thousands of times !!! Why to shoot these endless scenes of uncertainty and emptiness !!! If the film was meant to be a satiric movie and ironically telling stories about foreign families in France ,, I would say the director was genius, because he succeeded to make me angry in a way that i can't remember my self getting angry in a cinema like that. But if he meant to shoot a real life image of these families in France ,, I wish i wouldn't have fell in that nest !! Orientalism-promoting+abuse in the sake of making money !! especially when it comes from an oriental director, in the west !!! I can imagine the success of this film in France and Europe… this is the way they like to see the orient ! and he supplied the best material for that ! endless scenes of shouting, belly dancing which made me not wanting to look at the screen anymore, full of shame !! The kids of the new generation in Frnace against the old one, endlessly teasing the father of the family.The editing was really bad. Long scenes. Interesting story and good actors but the emptiness prevails. Household super clichés and no proper ending after suffering for more than 2 hours ! My rate is 2-3 , the points are for the actors . A bad film .

TheFluffyKnight Abdel Kechiche's tragicomedy is a film of contradictions and contrasts. It is both quiet and boisterous, with a script that is both understated and energetic, and which explores (among other things) how communities both accept immigrants, and yet remain suspicious of them.Couscous follows sixty-something Slimane Beiji, a Tunisian-French shipyard worker in the French port town of Sète, played with reserved dignity by Habib Boufares. Despite being divorced, Slimane still spends a lot of time with his ex-wife and their extended family. The rest of his time is spent with his girlfriend and her daughter, who own a quayside hotel.When Slimane is laid off, it comes as the last straw in a life that has become increasingly redundant. Left with nothing to lose, he hits upon the idea of opening a restaurant on an old boat. The project becomes a focal point for Slimane's extended family: his sons lend a hand with the boat's renovation; his girlfriend's daughter helps acquiring the necessary bank loans and official documents; and his ex-wife will cook the restaurants signature dish – the eponymous couscous.The restaurant works as a symbol of the hopes and dreams of immigrants – how all they want is to integrate and work in their new community, whilst still retaining the culture and customs of their homeland. But it also signifies the duality of a community's attitude toward immigrants. During a party thrown to promote Slimane's restaurant, the guests all compliment their host and try their hand at a little Arabic; and yet, when Slimane's back is turned, they whisper amongst themselves that "he's not from around here." But Couscous really shines in its extended scenes of dialogue. At several points during the film we join Slimane and his family as they sit in kitchens or dining rooms and do nothing but talk. And it is a joy to watch. The script shows an eye for authentic dialogue, meandering through topics as diverse as racism in the workplace, the extortionate price of nappies, and using Arabic in the bedroom. The genuine performances from the supporting cast draw us further into these scenes, and the cinematography keeps us there. The camera squeezes between family members, getting the kind of intimate close-ups that give a real impression of a loud family dinner.This light-hearted attitude, present in the early scenes, contrasts with a grimmer final third, in which situations get progressively worse. And as things get worse, family relationships start to break down.This also reveals the film's ultimate irony. Slimane's family is a close-knit unit when the members each live separate lives. But when the restaurant brings them together, family unity dissolves and they resort to serious bickering.