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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: The Secret of the Grain

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#1 of 1 Posted 12/18/08 10:49 PM

From harveykarten Posts 744 Last Nov-19
To All [Msg # 23646.1 ]

THE SECRET OF THE GRAIN (La Graine et le mulet)

IFC Films
Reviewed for CompuServe by Harvey Karten
Grade: B
Directed by: Abdellatif Kechiche
Written By: Abdellatif Kechiche
Cast: Habib Boufares, Hafsia Herzi, Faridah Benkhetache, Abdellahamid Aktouche, Bouraouia Marzouk
Screened at: Review 2, NYC, 12/18/08
Opens: December 24, 2008

Tunis-born, French-raised writer-director Abdellatif Kechiche provides an engaging, if overlong and talky, tale inspired by events in his own life. His latest film is thematically about a group of Tunisian émigrés who make their home in the far from-glamorous French town of Sete, located Northeast of Marseilles with the Etang (pond) de Thau on the west and the Mediterranean on the east.. The French village can be looked upon as a microcosm of immigrant groups throughout France and, in a stretch, as a sample of minority representation in any of the world’s countries that house cultures distinct from those of the majority.

“The Secret of the Grain,” whose French title is literally “The Grain and tMullet,” or more loosely, “Fish Couscous,” could also be subtitled “The Close-Ups,” as director Kechiche puts image after image of this lively group right into audience faces. The Tunisian-French, a varied group bearing the same jealousies and hostilities and propensity to gossip that we find anywhere here in the U.S., provides the movie’s universality: to coin a cliché, “We’re the same the whole world over.”

The opening segments, which provide more development than needed, are a tough sell, as we eavesdrop on dialogue that includes complaints by the principal character’s estranged wife that a toddler is not keeping up with the usual developmental stages of infants in that she pees in her diaper instead of on the potty. When Kechiche moves beyond the idle chatter into the real meat (or fish) of the story, he affords us a more precise delineation of the conflicts that lie barely dormant in the family and those subtle clues of racism that you’d expect when a bourgeois segment of the majority culture chat within themselves about “the other.”

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the tale is not the alienation that miffs some Tunisians living in France but the dissonance between the first generation of immigrants and their offspring, the latter feeling completely at home in the French language, fully able to negotiate with the French in business affairs. The father as family head? That’s out the window now, though happily the older men do not appear threatened by loss of their authority.

Slimane (Habib Boufares), now past the age of sixty, has been laid off from his job on the docks after thirty-five years, half of which were spent toiling off the books. His identity as a worker now threatened, he turns to his dream of opening a restaurant on a decaying boat, one which will specialize in fish couscous for which he acquired a taste from his estranged wife, Souad (Bouraouia Marzouk). Living in a small dockside hotel managed by his mistress, Latifa (Hatika Karaoui), he and his girlfriend spend Sundays feasting and arguing at Souad’s home, the dialogue revealing more than we want to know about their lives. Slimane’s son Majid (Sami Zitouni) is the irresponsible one of the brood, a stud whose Russian wife Julia (Alice Houri) cries bitterly at the man’s refusal to be a good father or spend time with her, time he tends to spend with a French woman who takes him away from his job as a tour guide on a boat for a quickie now and then Slimane and a forward, talented and attractive daughter of Slimane’s lover, Rym (Hafsia Herzi) open negotiations with a banker and some city officials on Slimane’s wish to open a restaurant, leading ultimately into their planning a party for the necessary officials and for their friends with the coucous prepared by Slimane’s wife, Souad—a prospect that his girlfriend finds humiliating. When the food is delayed for over two hours, tensions come to a boil rather than the couscous.

If awards are to be given for ensemble acting, one hopes that “The Secret of the Grain” would be considered, as this picture is made for an ensemble—family squabbles, family support on a business plan, families acting perversely. Special recognition should go to Hafsia Herzi, whose extended belly dance makes the chorines at the Moulin Rouge look positively effete .

Not Rated. 151 minutes. © 2008 by Harvey Karten Member: NY Film Critics Online

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Harvey Karten's Reviews

Review: The Secret of the Grain

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