The Secret of the Grain
Director: Abdellatif Kechiche
Year Released: 2007
Rating: 1.5
An aging dock worker (Habib Boufares) is told he's moving too slow, so he decides to quit his job and start a fish couscous restaurant on a boat he renovated - his family life is kind of a mess, but he is able to get some assistance from his paramour's daughter (Hafsia Herzi), who is a convincing businesswoman and apparently a belly-dancer (some people ... find this celebration of cellulite appealing). The lead is a depressive lump, literally and figuratively impotent, and it's hard to gauge his interest in anything or his thoughts on his second career - he mumbles, he paces around, he needs a pick-me-up, and he gets lost in the movie while Herzi (and sequences involving rapid food consumption) command most of the attention. The scenes are shapeless and rambling - Kechiche is trying for a kind of naturalism, but simply letting the cameras roll and roll doesn't necessarily lead the viewer to a stronger sense of cinematic truth.
