Couscous (la graine et le mulet)
15 cert
France 2007
Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche
starring Bouraouia Marzouk, Habib Boufares, Hatika Karaoui, 154 mins

Tunisian born Kechiche’s appraisal of modern France, told from the perspective of a second generation immmigrant, was the winner of France’s most prestigious movie award, the César, for best French film of 2007.

Slimane is a 60 year old Arab immigrant, a shipyard worker who has lived in the mediterranean port of Sète for 35 years. A changing financial climate means that Slimane is facing redundancy, so he decides to try and fulfil a long held dream of opening his own restaurant – an unseaworthy boat that he transforms into a floating eatery. The film charts this project, building to the climactic opening night, and the involvement of his complex extended family: his younger new wife and devoted stepdaughter, his sons and daughters from his first marriage who bitterly resent his new family, and his ex-wife, a renowned cook whose signature couscous is to be the highlight of Slimane’s envisaged menu.

Through his experience - the intermarriage of his children with native French people, and their persepctive on his situation; the lot of an ageing immigrant attempting to penetrate a resistant civic beaurocracy - the film offers a consideration of the experience of exile and immigration, and the tension between native culture and French identity. And food is at the heart of this experience, with prolonged and intimate family meals, the choosing, preparation and sharing of food taking up much of the screen time. Food becomes a metaphor for identity and connection, and Couscous becomes another in a long line of films to explore the centrality of food to life and culture. Philip French of the Observer wrote in his June review: ‘this movie about exile, loneliness, the nature of families, self-respect and the pursuit of dreams encompasses comedy and tragedy with understanding, compassion and a total absence of sentimentality’.

In French with English Subtitles

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