La graine et le mulet

La graine et le mulet, lower-cased as titles are in France, was given an art-housey English-language title, The Secret of the Grain. The French words literally translate as "The grain and the mullet", and the movie's grain is that used to make Couscous, which was the film's alternative and more appetising title for foreign markets.

The documentary-style 2.5-hour saga shows the attempt by a gaunt 60-year-old Arab-French dock labourer and his extended family to create a specialty fish couscous restaurant on a dilapidated boat in the Mediterranean fishing port of Sete.

Its Tunis-born Abdellatif Kechiche writer-director has an excellent track record. He won seven awards (including two at Venice) for his debut movie, La faute a Voltaire (Poetical Refugee), in 2000, and another 15 (including 4 Cesars, for Best French film, direction, writing and most promising actress) for his second feature, L'esquive (Games of Love and Chance) in 2003. Couscous collected another 18 awards, including 4 more Cesars in 2008 (the same ones as in 2003) and 5 Venice 2007 awards, and it's a bewitching reason to try and catch up on the earlier works.

Only five of the complex movie's 15 lead roles had ever acted before, and most of them were non-Arab French. Yet the naturalism of the ensemble multi-ethnic (Arab, Russian and French) French-speaking cast is remarkable. They perform with overwhelming credibility in tight close-ups, individually and in clusters, among hand-held cameras, possibly improvising, compelling audiences to feel they inhabit a documentary. Clearly, Kechiche's skills include the abilities to identify and develop natural acting talents in photogenic people.

The central figure of the old man, Slimane (Habib Boufares), struggles with bureaucrats and bankers in his patient effort to create a legacy for his large family. His divorced wife is a master couscous cook, preparing a weekly feast for the extended family and it is her recipe on which unemployed Slimane builds his dream; his key ally is the strong-willed young daughter of his hotel-keeping lover's previous marriage. Towards the end of the movie, her passionate impromptu belly-dance saves cooking time and rewards diners' patience at the boat-restaurant's inaugural feast, threatened with failure when its cauldron of the special couscous goes astray. It's the role of a lifetime, winning newcomer Hafsia Herzi her Cesar.

In the beginning sequences, Kechiche's screenplay introduces the family while Slimane rides his scooter around the port city, dropping off fish for his ex-wife, children and beloved grandkids, and his lover's hotel. At the end, circumstances bring them together, but there are no easy happy endings in this enchanting family story, and Kechiche leaves his audience to imagine the future fates of Slimane and his family. It's unlikely that such a master movie-maker would indulge us with a Hollywood-style sequel.