Patience is required to become involved in the lives of this extended family, but there are rewards, including the vibrant performance of 20 year old newcomer Hafsia Herzi as Rym
1 Comment
03/16/08
The Secret of the Grain (2008)
90
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:42
Fresh:38
Rotten:4
Average Rating:7.7/10
Consensus: A complex portrait of an immigrant family, The Secret of the Grain is a sprawling, intimate film with many fine performances.
Reviews for The Secret of the Grain
Top CriticThe film works on a slow burn but by the end it has become utterly engrossing.
03/14/08
Top CriticNever sagging, it unfolds over 2 1/2 hours. Nothing is overexplained. Indeed, it takes us time to suss out Slimane's various familial relationships.
07/10/09
Time stretches out to the limits of endurance, Slimane's and ours, and there are moments toward the conclusion of this picture when you will want to scream and throw things at the screen, but it's mesmerizing. When it does end, suddenly, it feels a little
06/13/09
A ponderous tragedy about put-upon manhood? A verite snoop into cultures that are sexually mingled but publicly uneasy? A pill to be swallowed in the name of serious filmgoing? Maybe all of these.
05/07/09
Top CriticA dark and hilarious parable of human absurdity.
04/23/09
Despite some strong performances from the mostly amateur cast, as well as some intriguing insights into family dysfunctions and racial prejudice, the movie still comes across as being self-indulgent and at least a little disappointing.
04/17/09
Everyone figures in a masterfully paced final act that's hypnotic, genuinely suspenseful and emotionally complex.
03/20/09
Writer-director Abdel Kechiche has wrought a definitive statement on how it feels to live in a subculture.
03/13/09
The Secret of the Grain takes one man, his children, their spouses and babies, his ex-wife, his girlfriend, her daughter, and his friends and turns it all into a masterpiece about the strange power of food -- to heal, unite, exasperate.
02/19/09
A long but always engaging movie, intimately framed and exuberantly acted by a mixed cast of amateurs and professionals.
01/30/09
Rather than observing this family, we feel we are part of it, and that draws us in as nothing else can.
01/29/09
Top CriticThe French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche is that rare thing at the movies these days: an intelligent humanist.
01/29/09
The wonderful thing about Hafsia Herzi in The Secret of the Grain...is the way she and the character tiptoe around the story's edges for a while, taking their time and easing onto the audience's radar.
01/23/09
The Secret of the Grain never slows, always engages, may continue too long, but ends too soon. It is made of life itself.
01/22/09
Top CriticBefore you scoff at yet another benevolent look at a family straddling two cultures, Kechiche subtly subverts the genre.
01/12/09
I wish The Secret of the Grain had another title, something that conveys the vibrancy teeming in this great drama of daily life -- something less grainy.
01/07/09
[Director] Kechiche digs a good story out of the flux, and, in the movie’s final forty minutes, the suspense is terrific.
01/05/09
Top CriticThe Secret Of The Grain is more complicated than it sounds, less geared toward uplift than in revealing the fault-lines within this sprawling, multi-generational family and between their immigrant culture and their French hosts.
12/29/08
The Secret of the Grain is one of the most remarkable films of 2008, in part because it masterfully extends certain sequences not only to let them play out before our eyes but also to invite reflection even as the film is still running.
12/25/08
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