Movie Review: The Secret of the Grain

The themes of identity, postcoloniality, diaspora, labor, community, gender roles and love run freely and widely though the extraordinary film The Secret of the Grain. Written and directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, the movie begins as first generation French worker Slimane (the irresistable Habib Boufares) is told that his hours working in the shipyard in which he's repaired boats for over 30 years are being cut back. As Slimane (a Gallic renaming of the more probable Souleymane) stoically accepts the news, he points out that his labor is being replaced with that of undocumented worker labor. Slimane was an undocumented worker 30 years ago; now he's a French citizen and "too slow" for the demands of the job. He rides his bicycle back to talk with fellow workers, the local fisherman of the dock, who give him a passel of fish to take back to his family. These baskets of fish find themselves in monthly familial dinners paired with the first mother's nurturing couscous.

Thus begins the unspooling of this fascinating narrative, one that reveals the relationships that bind several communities together in an extended, hybrid network of lovers, workers, colonial and postcolonial citizens, women and men in struggle. Slimane is the biological father of one family who clearly adores both parents, but accepts their divorce. Slimane's first wife is salt of the earth, a good woman who loves her ex husband even though he brings her more fish when she needs alimony. His second wife owns a small hotel and restaurant; while she also loves Slimane, she does not want to be entrapped in the traditional role of a housewife and to some extent, challenges Slimane's expectations of her. In juxtaposing these two relationships to Slimane, their children, to each other and their North African community, Kechiche offers us interesting meditations on how women negotiate these larger networks. Ultimately, these women keep these several physical, psychic, cultural networks together.

The daughters of both women are as complex and richly drawn as Slimane. Kechiche asks us to consider the eldest of Slimane's first family Karima (Faridah Benkhetache), also a young wife and mother. Like all the women of this film, Karima is an outspoken, active member of her family and working community; in one scene she describes how the workers at her job went on strike for better conditions. Later Karima confronts an adulterous brother for his destructive actions. Her counterpoint is Rym (Hafsia Herzi), Slimane's stepdaughter, a young, beautiful and steel nerved bundle of religiousness, smarts, drive and sexuality. It's the love and support of these daughters that encourage Slimane to pursue his goal and gift to his famillies: a boat restaurant that serves North African food. This quest reveals the unspeakable desires and meanings of immigrant life, it's losses and gains-no more so than in the final ten minutes of the film.

Some reviewers have compared Kechiche's to neo realistic Western directors like Mike Leigh because of Secret of the Grain literally explicates the lives of this immigrant community. It almost feels like a documentary at time, so gorgeously nuanced is it's authenticity. However, I'd add father and daughter filmmakers M. and Samira Makmalbaf to that list-there is a clear acknowledgement of the methodologies of Iranian cinema in Secret of the Grain.