France's The Secret of the Grain

Please Note: The Secret of the Grain won the 2008 Cesar for Best Director, Best French Film, Best Original Screenplay, and Most Promising Actress and may sell-out. Advance ticket purchase from the MFA ( see link below) is suggested.With a running-time of over 2 and a half hours and a simple plot, this is a long, slow film concentrating on the interactions of the various family members. Actual screening time is 12:40.

The Secret of the Grain by Abdellatif Kechiche (2007, 151 min.). The grain is couscous, and the recipe is the secret in Abdellatif Kechiche?s warm and expansive family drama. Set in a community of first- and second-generation Maghrebi immigrants in a depressed port town in the south of France, Tunsisian-born Kechiche (Games of Love and Chance) allows the story to unfold at a leisurely pace, enveloping the audience in the internecine squabbles of an extended family for whom food provides more than sustenance. When sixty-one-year-old Slimane Beiji is laid off after thirty-five years at the shipyard, he decides to use his severance pay to buy a rundown boat that will house a restaurant to serve his ex-wife?s beloved fish couscous. ?What begins as a shapeless, immersive look at immigrant life in France gradually becomes a surprisingly deft piece of neorealist suspense, building up to the restaurant?s heartbreaking opening night? (New York Magazine). MFA Description

Slimane Beiji (Habib Boufares) is in his sixties, and about to be laid off from the shipyard job he has held for many years. He is divorced, but still connected to his large family of children and their families, and lives in the hotel run by his lover and her child Rym (Hafsia Herzi), whom he considers to be his own daughter. His former wife Souad is famous for the fish couscous, which he hopes will provide him with a new direction, although the jealousies and betrayals of his children may be a barrier to his eventual success. hoopla.nu

Here is a link to a complete review: http://www.smh.com.au...

And you can buy your tickets here: https://ev12.evenue.n...

After the film we'll be going to a local restaurant for our group discussion.
Hope to see you there-
Tom