★★★★☆Released on Blu-ray this week to capitalise on the success of his Palme d'Or-winning Blue Is the Warmest Colour (2013), Abdellatif Kechiche's Couscous (2007) is a film similarly built upon corporeal appetites, with the majority of its runtime spent around the bustling dining table of a Tunisian immigrant family. Flooding the senses with a warm, thematically rich and appetising drama about community and cultural identity, Kechiche's intimate portrait of migrant life in Southern France is a dish to truly savour. Slimane (Habib Boufares) is a 60-year-old Tunisian immigrant living in Séte, a port and seaside resort on the Mediterranean coast with a rich multicultural population.
- 4/14/2014
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
Chicago – Not to be confused with “The Secret in Their Eyes,” “The Secret of Kells,” or “The Secret,” this French family drama is saddled with a most unfortunate title for its American release. Though the picture’s original title, “The Grain and the Mullet,” may not sound like an upgrade, it offered an intriguing metaphor for the film’s unlikely union of two unforgettable characters.
The first is Slimane, played by Habib Boufares as an aging, exhausted man who can’t seem to catch up with the ever-changing world. His thirty-five years of laborious work at a shipyard job are brought to a screeching halt when his boss fires him for not working fast enough (thus illustrating that speed is valued above quality). As Slimane delivers fish to various members of his family, he’s greeted with hostility by his ex-wife (Bouraouïa Marzouk) and begrudging affection by one of his daughters,...
The first is Slimane, played by Habib Boufares as an aging, exhausted man who can’t seem to catch up with the ever-changing world. His thirty-five years of laborious work at a shipyard job are brought to a screeching halt when his boss fires him for not working fast enough (thus illustrating that speed is valued above quality). As Slimane delivers fish to various members of his family, he’s greeted with hostility by his ex-wife (Bouraouïa Marzouk) and begrudging affection by one of his daughters,...
- 8/4/2010
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
Nobody ever said movies were easy to make. Still, I don't know anyone who isn't more or less reliably dissatisfied with what they see on contemporary screens -- all nostalgia for past golden ages aside, most new films, even when they're dazzling or rigorous, feel undernourishing, gimmicky, ephemeral.
There are all kinds of accomplishments possible in cinema, and some do not brand the memory or trouble your heart, and they can be accomplishments all the same. (I'm thinking of certain schools of Asian neo-minimalism, and high-end Hollywood auteurism.) But where's the Renoir banquet film, the mega-novel social saga, the hypertrophic state-of-the-age melodrama? It's the kind of movie you'd hope film pros could make regularly, to fill our empty, sugar-shocked bellies, but they're difficult and rare, and by the time Abdellatif Kechiche's "The Secret of the Grain" (2007) hit U.S. theaters a few years back, we may've forgotten that it's what we've needed all along.
There are all kinds of accomplishments possible in cinema, and some do not brand the memory or trouble your heart, and they can be accomplishments all the same. (I'm thinking of certain schools of Asian neo-minimalism, and high-end Hollywood auteurism.) But where's the Renoir banquet film, the mega-novel social saga, the hypertrophic state-of-the-age melodrama? It's the kind of movie you'd hope film pros could make regularly, to fill our empty, sugar-shocked bellies, but they're difficult and rare, and by the time Abdellatif Kechiche's "The Secret of the Grain" (2007) hit U.S. theaters a few years back, we may've forgotten that it's what we've needed all along.
- 7/27/2010
- by Michael Atkinson
- ifc.com
Abdellatif Kechiche's The Secret of a Grain is a lesson in "how to" and "how to not" make a great movie. For two hours of its 154-minute running time it introduces the audience to new faces and builds tension out of merely existing and allowing the camera to tell the story. However, in the final 30 minutes of this familial drama you begin to feel the influence of a script where one didn't seem to exist before. What was once real now feels fake. It feels like a set-up.
Kechiche asks his audience to bare with him for 90 minutes as he builds his story and frames his characters. The next 30 minutes are about as tense as any film could possibly be and the fact this tension derives from the question of whether or not the couscous will arrive in time for the opening night of Slimane Beiji's (Habib Boufares) restaurant on the water is unfathomable.
Kechiche asks his audience to bare with him for 90 minutes as he builds his story and frames his characters. The next 30 minutes are about as tense as any film could possibly be and the fact this tension derives from the question of whether or not the couscous will arrive in time for the opening night of Slimane Beiji's (Habib Boufares) restaurant on the water is unfathomable.
- 7/27/2010
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
The trio of New York Times critics (Manohla Dargis, A.O. Scott and Stephen Holden) have weighed in with their own nominations for the year's best in movies with their selections for Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor, Supporting Actress and Original and Adapted Screenplays. Quickly glancing through the list I see Manohla Dargis loved Charlie Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York (at least the acting) and is the only one that gave The Dark Knight any love. Thankfully Slumdog Millionaire wasn't "nominated" for anything other than a lone Adapted Screenplay notice from A.O. Scott. Happy-Go-Lucky saw plenty of attention and believe it or not, there isn't one film all three could agree on for Best Picture with Wall-e and Happy-Go-Lucky being the front-runners as they were mentioned twice - Dargis was the main reason for this as her selections didn't show up on either Stephen Holden or A.
- 1/3/2009
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
At the beginning of The Secret Of The Grain, a subtle and affectionate treatment of a North African family in a French port city, Habib Boufares, a 61-year-old who looks considerably more worn, decides to take his life in a new direction. This decision is astonishing in itself, since people of his age are not supposed to try another career, but after losing his job of 35 years at the shipyard, the entrepreneurial spirit suddenly hits him. Right away, Tunisian-born, French-bred writer-director Abdellatif Kechiche sets the stage for a real crowd-pleaser, especially once he introduces Boufares’ extended family, which includes a tempestuous ex-wife, four children and their kids, a new girlfriend, and her determined, outspoken daughter, played by Hafsia Herzi. Their collective efforts to help Boufares’ open up a couscous restaurant, culminating in a big party intended to attract investors, makes it sounds like Big Night revisited. But The Secret...
- 12/25/2008
- by Scott Tobias
- avclub.com
Speed Racer Release Date: Dec. 24
Director: Abdel Kechiche
Writer: Abdel Kechiche
Cinematographer: Lubomir Bakchev
Starring: Habib Boufares, Hafsia Herzi, Farida Benkhetache, Abdelhamid Aktouche
Studio Information: Pathé Distribution, 151 mins.
You can read a book at your own pace. Skip a boring chapter or skim the last page; it's up to you. But a movie in a theater controls you. A 151-minute film takes 151 minutes to watch, and there's nothing the audience can do short of leaving. Surprisingly few filmmakers use this unusual aspect of cinema to carry any meaning of its own, but a hallmark of great films is a distinctive use of length. Deciding what to lavish with the camera's gaze, and for how long, is a part of the cinematic art, and the goal is not always to flatter or give comfort to the audience.
Director: Abdel Kechiche
Writer: Abdel Kechiche
Cinematographer: Lubomir Bakchev
Starring: Habib Boufares, Hafsia Herzi, Farida Benkhetache, Abdelhamid Aktouche
Studio Information: Pathé Distribution, 151 mins.
You can read a book at your own pace. Skip a boring chapter or skim the last page; it's up to you. But a movie in a theater controls you. A 151-minute film takes 151 minutes to watch, and there's nothing the audience can do short of leaving. Surprisingly few filmmakers use this unusual aspect of cinema to carry any meaning of its own, but a hallmark of great films is a distinctive use of length. Deciding what to lavish with the camera's gaze, and for how long, is a part of the cinematic art, and the goal is not always to flatter or give comfort to the audience.
- 12/24/2008
- Pastemagazine.com
By Neil Pedley
After a December in which big name stars have been mostly Mia, this holiday week finds Dustin Hoffman getting fired, Brad Pitt getting old and Tom Cruise trying to explain why you really should spend Christmas Day with your family reliving one of the most bloody chapters in recent history. Merry Christmas everyone!
"Bedtime Stories"
A simple glance at the one-sheet for this anarchic family friendly crowd-pleaser from the Mouse House tells you everything you need to know. Searching for a new cash cow post-"Pirates," the folks at Disney took one look at the numbers for "Night at the Museum" and decided they fancied a bit of that, so here comes Adam Sandler fending off aliens, cowboys and Romans when his world is transformed (literally) by the outlandish bedtime stories he tells his niece and nephew to sleep with each night, only to discover the stories...
After a December in which big name stars have been mostly Mia, this holiday week finds Dustin Hoffman getting fired, Brad Pitt getting old and Tom Cruise trying to explain why you really should spend Christmas Day with your family reliving one of the most bloody chapters in recent history. Merry Christmas everyone!
"Bedtime Stories"
A simple glance at the one-sheet for this anarchic family friendly crowd-pleaser from the Mouse House tells you everything you need to know. Searching for a new cash cow post-"Pirates," the folks at Disney took one look at the numbers for "Night at the Museum" and decided they fancied a bit of that, so here comes Adam Sandler fending off aliens, cowboys and Romans when his world is transformed (literally) by the outlandish bedtime stories he tells his niece and nephew to sleep with each night, only to discover the stories...
- 12/22/2008
- by Neil Pedley
- ifc.com
- IFC Films, who has been filling up their coffers with subtitled fair as of late, has acquired the Us distribution rights to Abdellatif Kechiche's French drama La Graine et le mulet (The Secret of the Grain). Arianna Bocco grabbed the drama from Mike Runagall at Pathe International. The film tells the story of sixty year old dock worker in the port of Sete, Slimane Beiji (Habib Boufares), who aspires to open his own restaurant in order to make something of his useless life. A divorced father, he tries his best to stay close to his family despite obvious tensions. Unable to realistically achieve his dreams on his own, his family slowly rallies around him and in the process reconnect. With over 800,000 admissions at the French box office and four Cesar awards (along with wins at Étoiles d'Or, Prix Louis Delluc, and the Lumiere Awards), the film has proven a great domestic success.
- 4/24/2008
- IONCINEMA.com
Venice International Film Festival
VENICE, Italy -- A penchant for suffocating close-ups and an overabundance of scenes that go on far too long mar Abdellatif Kechiche's Secret of the Grain, an otherwise engaging drama about an immigrant Arab family in France.
Capturing the love, loyalty and internecine squabbles of a large family struggling to get by in an often unwelcoming land, the film features some excellent performances in its tale of a hard-working family patriarch who decides to open a restaurant on a boat.
Watching people eat and talk with their mouths open at length in close-up on a wide screen and listening to harangues that last way past their point of impact may not please all audiences but the film has many pleasures and should travel well
The secret of the grain in the title is the ability of a woman named Soaud (Bouraouia Marzouk) to make couscous out of it. All her sons and daughters and their partners gather at the table when she is cooking and she even makes a plate for her estranged husband Slimane (Habib Boufares).
Slimane has been laid off after 35 years of working on the docks and he decides to put his severance pay towards establishing a floating restaurant on an abandoned vessel that he is able to acquire for virtually nothing. His sons chip in to help renovate but he gets the most support from Rym (Hafsia Herzi), the beautiful daughter of his lover Latifa (Hatika Karaoui), who loves him as a father.
That doesn't go over well with the rest of Slimane's kids, especially stalwart daughter Karima (Faridah Benkhetache), who acts as her mother's ramrod in keeping the family together. It all gets very complicated when not only does Slimane refuse to give up on his dream project but also he intends Soaud's couscous to be the specialty of the house.
There are other complications involving Slimane's reluctance to give up his apartment and move in with Latifa and the errant behavior of one of his sons, Majid (Sami Zitouni), who leaves his wife Julia (Alice Houri) at home alone with their baby too often.
Director and co-writer Hechiche does a good job of establishing all the characters and shows the gradual coming together of Slimane's project with the casual racism he endures. The climax at an onboard fundraising banquet cuts away to several crises that put his venture at risk.
The writing and acting are fine, and the family gatherings are well staged but they become grinding due to constant close-ups and the director's lack of discipline in failing to yell cut while he's ahead. Boufares has an almost noble presence as the determined would-be restaurateur; Benkhetache shows the soft core inside Karima's tough exterior; and Herzi makes Rym wise beyond her years in a performance that grows from youthful enthusiasm to sensuous guile.
THE SECRET OF THE GRAIN
Hirsch and Pathe Renn Production
Credits:
Director: Abdellatif Kechiche
Writers: Abdellatif Kechiche, Ghalya Lacroix
Producer: Claude Berri
Executive producer: Pierre Graunstein
Director of photography: Lubomir Bakchev
Production designer: Benoit Barouh
Costume designer: Maria Beloso Hall
Editors: Ghalya Lacroix, Camille Toubkis
Cast:
Slimane: Habib Boufares
Rym: Hafsia Herzi
Karima: Faridah Benkhetache
Hamid: Abdelhamid Aktouche
Soaud: Bouraouia Marzouk
Julia: Alice Houri
Serguei: Cyril Favre
Lilia: Leila D'Issernio
Kader: Abdelkader Djeloulli
Mario: Bruno Lochet
Jose: Olivier Loustau
Majid: Sami Zitouni
Olfa: Sabrina Ouazini
Riadh: Mohamed Benabdeslem
Latifa: Hatika Karaoui
Henri: Henri Rodriquez
Sarah: Nadia Taouil
Running time -- 151 minutes
No MPAA rating...
VENICE, Italy -- A penchant for suffocating close-ups and an overabundance of scenes that go on far too long mar Abdellatif Kechiche's Secret of the Grain, an otherwise engaging drama about an immigrant Arab family in France.
Capturing the love, loyalty and internecine squabbles of a large family struggling to get by in an often unwelcoming land, the film features some excellent performances in its tale of a hard-working family patriarch who decides to open a restaurant on a boat.
Watching people eat and talk with their mouths open at length in close-up on a wide screen and listening to harangues that last way past their point of impact may not please all audiences but the film has many pleasures and should travel well
The secret of the grain in the title is the ability of a woman named Soaud (Bouraouia Marzouk) to make couscous out of it. All her sons and daughters and their partners gather at the table when she is cooking and she even makes a plate for her estranged husband Slimane (Habib Boufares).
Slimane has been laid off after 35 years of working on the docks and he decides to put his severance pay towards establishing a floating restaurant on an abandoned vessel that he is able to acquire for virtually nothing. His sons chip in to help renovate but he gets the most support from Rym (Hafsia Herzi), the beautiful daughter of his lover Latifa (Hatika Karaoui), who loves him as a father.
That doesn't go over well with the rest of Slimane's kids, especially stalwart daughter Karima (Faridah Benkhetache), who acts as her mother's ramrod in keeping the family together. It all gets very complicated when not only does Slimane refuse to give up on his dream project but also he intends Soaud's couscous to be the specialty of the house.
There are other complications involving Slimane's reluctance to give up his apartment and move in with Latifa and the errant behavior of one of his sons, Majid (Sami Zitouni), who leaves his wife Julia (Alice Houri) at home alone with their baby too often.
Director and co-writer Hechiche does a good job of establishing all the characters and shows the gradual coming together of Slimane's project with the casual racism he endures. The climax at an onboard fundraising banquet cuts away to several crises that put his venture at risk.
The writing and acting are fine, and the family gatherings are well staged but they become grinding due to constant close-ups and the director's lack of discipline in failing to yell cut while he's ahead. Boufares has an almost noble presence as the determined would-be restaurateur; Benkhetache shows the soft core inside Karima's tough exterior; and Herzi makes Rym wise beyond her years in a performance that grows from youthful enthusiasm to sensuous guile.
THE SECRET OF THE GRAIN
Hirsch and Pathe Renn Production
Credits:
Director: Abdellatif Kechiche
Writers: Abdellatif Kechiche, Ghalya Lacroix
Producer: Claude Berri
Executive producer: Pierre Graunstein
Director of photography: Lubomir Bakchev
Production designer: Benoit Barouh
Costume designer: Maria Beloso Hall
Editors: Ghalya Lacroix, Camille Toubkis
Cast:
Slimane: Habib Boufares
Rym: Hafsia Herzi
Karima: Faridah Benkhetache
Hamid: Abdelhamid Aktouche
Soaud: Bouraouia Marzouk
Julia: Alice Houri
Serguei: Cyril Favre
Lilia: Leila D'Issernio
Kader: Abdelkader Djeloulli
Mario: Bruno Lochet
Jose: Olivier Loustau
Majid: Sami Zitouni
Olfa: Sabrina Ouazini
Riadh: Mohamed Benabdeslem
Latifa: Hatika Karaoui
Henri: Henri Rodriquez
Sarah: Nadia Taouil
Running time -- 151 minutes
No MPAA rating...
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