| COUSCOUS (2007) : A.Kechiche : 7/10 : review online SAT.6.SEP. |
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 In 2005, writer-director Abdellatif Kechiche scored an unexpected four-timer at the Cesars (France's Oscar equivalent) when L'Esquive beat A Very Long Engagement, Kings and Queen, The Choir and 36 to win Best Picture. This February his Couscous took the same quartet: Best Picture (against La Vie en Rose, Persepolis, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and A Secret), Best Director, Best Screenplay and 'Most promising young actress' for 20-year-old newcomer Hafsia Herzi. But the highest accolade for this much-garlanded tale of a former dock-worker's complicated family-life has come in defeat: film-critics' union FIPRESCI ranked it behind only There Will Be Blood in their uber-prestigious annual poll. Though no masterpiece, this is a likeably sprawling, warm picture of the kind that appeals to wide sections of the critical and moviegoing public. It's an 'arthouse crowdpleaser' with impeccable intentions, artistic integrity and a social conscience, and is demanding without being too challenging. Kechiche favours extended takes of several minutes apiece, but as these tend to be of bustling family gatherings we're a long way from the austere, forbidding rigours of, say, a Bela Tarr or a Pedro Costa. It certainly helps that he's created such an involving, engaging ensemble around on the central figure of Slimane (Habib Boufares) - a 61-year-old who, as the film begins, has been working in the shipyards of Sète (a medium-sized port between Marseille and Perpignan) for over three decades. With unusual, isolated geography that's led it to be nicknamed the 'Venice of the Languedoc', Sète (pop. 39,542) is the kind of place where everyone knows everyone else's business. And while Slimane is a withdrawn, hang-dog figure, his private life has been subject of much discussion since he left his wife Souad (Bouraouia Marzouk) in favour of hotelier Latifa (Hatika Karaoui). While he still sees plenty of his 'other' family, including several adult children, his closest bond is with Latifa's spirited daughter Rym (Herzi.) After he's suddenly laid off from his job, the doggedly stoical Slimane, with Rym's help, invests his redundancy money by turning an abandoned old ship into a floating restaurant - Souad's famed fish couscous to be the house special. Negotiating municipal red-tape and finding finance prove tricky, however, and much depends on a gala dinner on the newly-refurbished boat to which all key players are invited. Complications rapidly ensue... Kechiche uses the specific story of Slimane to celebrate and/or explore various issues relating to family, community, social cohesion and the changing nature of French society. With frame-filling close-ups and those extended takes, he creates at Altman-ish atmosphere where the actors seem to enjoy much improvisational leeway to their chatter-box characters - the results are many scenes in which the viewer is fully immersed in the quotidian reality of family and town life. That said, there are times when one wishes that editors Ghalya Lacroix and Camille Toubkis had been a little more energetic with their 'scissors'. At other junctures, paradoxically, Kechiche and company elide over what might otherwise have been crucial plot points - related, instead via dialogue, rather in the manner of a play in which key developments occur off-stage. Kechiche's general approach, however, would be more accurately described as 'novelistic': Couscous is a baggy, organic kind of narrative in which attention and time are devoted to seemingly peripheral figures so that a coherent and complex social picture is constructed. The overall recipe sees Raymond Guédiguian's Marseille chronicle The Town is Quiet (2001) mixed with mildly farcical elements familiar from the Fawlty Towers episode Gourmet Night (1975): an apparently incongruous set of ingredients, perhaps, but the resulting bittersweet feast proves eminently digestible. Neil Young 6.Sep.08 -------------------------------------------------------------------- La Graine et le mulet aka The Secret of the Grain France 154m (BBFC timing) director : Abdellatif Kechiche (L'Esquive aka Games of Love and Chance; Blame It On Voltaire.) editors : Ghalia Lacroix (L'Esquive aka Games of Love and Chance) Camille Toubkis (debut) seen 4.Sep.08 Stockton (Arc arts centre: £5.50)  |
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