"La Graine et le Mulet" by Abdellatif Kachiche: your purchase in part benefits Levantine Cultural CenterReviewed by David Shasha

The precarious status of North African immigrants in France grounds the complex family drama that is "The Secret of the Grain." Taking its title from the savory fish couscous that is a signature dish of North African Arabs and Jews, the movie enters into the difficult world of one family led by a broken patriarch named Slimane.

Slimane works on the docks of an unnamed French city where his time as a laborer is about done. After working for over 30 years at the same place, he is now being moved out as labor costs are being slashed and he is now over 60 years old. We quickly learn that Slimane is divorced from his wife Souad and has a whole bunch of children and grandchildren. The film shows us a paterfamilias who is worn out, his family bursting at the seams and tensions everywhere. Souad complains that he is late with the alimony checks and his daughter Karima is fighting mightily with her two-year-old daughter to get her potty trained.

The family is full of life, yet is clearly beaten down by their poverty and a creeping dysfunctionalism that permeates the very pores of their existence. They fight, love and live with great brashness, often hiding the fear and desperation of being immigrants.

Interestingly, this France is a place where not only Arabs are part of the lower class. One of Slimane's sons, the profligate adulterer Majid, is married to a Russian immigrant named Julia. Treating her abominably, Majid is shown in the movie's initial scene having torrid sex while at work as a guide on a French touring ship. Majid's deceit will play a central role in the development of the movie's story at its most critical moment.

Slimane leaves the dock with a crate of fresh mullet given to him by his friends on the boats; mullet being the fish most prized for the famed fish couscous which informs the film's title.

Slimane drives off on his scooter and delivers the fish to the women in his life. After griping about the alimony and the ubiquitous fish that fills her freezer, Souad prepares a Sunday feast for her family where we get to meet the other son, Riyadh, and the husbands of the daughters; one of whom-the French one-attempts to speak a few words of Arabic with comical results. Souad, for all her diffidence and anger, is an expert cook and sits proudly as the matriarch of her family while they eat the food with great gusto.

The Sunday scene is charged with the robust energy of the traditional Arab table. Filled with good cheer, bawdiness and inflamed passions, the meal is a microcosm of a world that has been transplanted from the North Africa that Slimane left so many years before.

The fish couscous is the anchor of the family get-together; a symbol of the wholeness and integrity of the native Arab culture now lost to the immigrants. Its grand sumptuousness is the talk of the table and the movie viewer is treated to the gastronomic brilliance with a loving eye to visual detail. Magnificent images of the couscous, the gleaming fish, the sauce, vegetables, and the peppers served as a traditional condiment to the dish, impose themselves in an almost tactile manner on the viewer's consciousness, transforming the prosaic ingredients into sheer visual poetry.

Slimane, tellingly, is not present at the meal; he eats the fish couscous that his sons have brought after they have finished the family meal, alone in his apartment and is eventually joined by the daughter of his current lover, a beautiful young girl named Rym. The alienation of the patriarch is a sign of the immigrant experience as a form of social collapse and cultural breakdown.

There is residual tension between Slimane's two "families": His two sons hang around in his apartment after bringing the food and lament that he lives in such a "dump"; the "dump" in question is the hotel owned by Latifa, Slimane's lover. Rym comes by and shares the plate of fish couscous with Slimane and it becomes clear that Slimane has taken to her like one of his own daughters. But behind this love is the jealousy of Latifa who feels that Souad and her children have no respect for her and her daughter, both of whom have now become Slimane's second "family."