La graine et le mulet (2007)
(Couscous)
Country: FR
Technical: col 151m
Director: Abdellatif Kechiche
Cast: Habib Boufares, Hafsia Herzi, Farida Benkhetache
Synopsis:
A North-African chandlery worker in the port of Sète objects to reduced working hours and takes severance pay, hoping, with the support of his stepdaughter, to realise his dream of turning an old fishing boat into a couscous restaurant.
Review:
Taking its time over mealtime scenes and critical domestic conversations, the film builds up a picture of an extended family and mutually supportive community, all of whom are brought together over Slimane's project and have their part to contribute. It is cruelly ironic that the it is the younger members, as adumbrated in the film's opening scene, who bring disaster for all, given the restaurant's aim of providing a hearth for a beleaguered expatriate community, one that they will inherit. Some may find the downbeat ending too much, after two and a half hours of investment in these lives, but that, crucially, is the point, for how else would we feel sympathy for the generalised concerns the filmmaker is wishing to address?
(Couscous)
Country: FR
Technical: col 151m
Director: Abdellatif Kechiche
Cast: Habib Boufares, Hafsia Herzi, Farida Benkhetache
Synopsis:
A North-African chandlery worker in the port of Sète objects to reduced working hours and takes severance pay, hoping, with the support of his stepdaughter, to realise his dream of turning an old fishing boat into a couscous restaurant.
Review:
Taking its time over mealtime scenes and critical domestic conversations, the film builds up a picture of an extended family and mutually supportive community, all of whom are brought together over Slimane's project and have their part to contribute. It is cruelly ironic that the it is the younger members, as adumbrated in the film's opening scene, who bring disaster for all, given the restaurant's aim of providing a hearth for a beleaguered expatriate community, one that they will inherit. Some may find the downbeat ending too much, after two and a half hours of investment in these lives, but that, crucially, is the point, for how else would we feel sympathy for the generalised concerns the filmmaker is wishing to address?
(Couscous)
Country: FR
Technical: col 151m
Director: Abdellatif Kechiche
Cast: Habib Boufares, Hafsia Herzi, Farida Benkhetache
Synopsis:
A North-African chandlery worker in the port of Sète objects to reduced working hours and takes severance pay, hoping, with the support of his stepdaughter, to realise his dream of turning an old fishing boat into a couscous restaurant.
Review:
Taking its time over mealtime scenes and critical domestic conversations, the film builds up a picture of an extended family and mutually supportive community, all of whom are brought together over Slimane's project and have their part to contribute. It is cruelly ironic that the it is the younger members, as adumbrated in the film's opening scene, who bring disaster for all, given the restaurant's aim of providing a hearth for a beleaguered expatriate community, one that they will inherit. Some may find the downbeat ending too much, after two and a half hours of investment in these lives, but that, crucially, is the point, for how else would we feel sympathy for the generalised concerns the filmmaker is wishing to address?