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The Secret of The Grain
21 Nov 2008, 2111 hrs IST,
Nikhat Kazmi, TNN
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The
Secret of The Grain
(drama)
Cast:
Habib Boufares, Hafsia
Herzi
Direction:
Abdellatif
Kechiche
Critic ratings:
The film has been a winner at
several international film festivals and has won the Best Film award in France.
Rightly so, for
The
Secrets of The Grain
is both cinematically
and thematically
mesmerising.
On the one hand is
its camera work which captures the highs and lows of an immigrant French family
with riveting intimacy. And on the other hand is the heartwarming story which
serenades the institution of family like never before.
No homilies, no fake goodness;
on the contrary, there are loads of internecine rivalries, bitching, breaking
apart until the final coming together, when the head of the family actually ends
up bringing the disparate members of his extended family together, even in his
absence.
Sixty-year-old
Silimane is a Tunisian immigrant who has been laid off from his work and decides
to use his severance pay to set a restaurant that serves couscous made by his
ex-wife. Currently, he is living with his mistress and his step daughter who run
a seedy hotel.
Naturally, they
are treated as outsiders by the rest of the family that gets together every
Sunday for a family lunch, excluding them. It's a quaint ritual, meant to
preserve the traditions of a family that may have become quintessentially
French, yet it hasn't lost it's traditional
culture.
It takes many a
hurdles before Silimane's dream actually comes true. But more importantly, his
couscous eatery ends up bringing the feuding Tunisian family together, despite
the bitterness, the rivalries. Watch out for some excellent performances and a
refreshing new look at 'family dramas.'
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