- Also known as:
- Secret of the Grain; Couscous
- Year:
- 2007
- Country:
- Predominant Genre:
- Drama
- Director:
- Best Performances:
- Everyone
- Plot:
- At the port of Sète, a tired 60-year-old drags himself toward a shipyard job that has become more and more difficult to cope with as the years go by.
- Themes:
- Personal change | Self-expression | Compassion | Totalitarianism | Political Correctness | White supremacy
- Similar To (in Plot, Theme or Style):
- Unknown
- Review Format:
- DVD
Caucasian Fear of Assimilation & Integration
If overlong, this superb movie is about an assimilated culture struggling in a hostile environment against all the odds.
Food serves as a means of communicating that culture down the generations as if the very preparation, the food itself and its consumption transmitted civilization. (The cuisine is also an excellent specific for homesickness.)
The ciné vérité style elicits naturalistic performances from all the performers and slowly draws you into their sometimes-fractious world. For these migrants, the restaurant business is not only a means of livelihood but also a way of keeping the links with their own culture very much open. This avoids the rootlessness of those tempted to fully embrace the indigenous culture.
The themes of family, love and work provide enough nourishment for everyone with at least one of those things.
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