Couscous

I saw this terrific French-Tunisian film last night. Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche, it's called 'Couscous' in the UK. It's the story of a man who loses his job and wants to set up a family-run fish couscous restaurant on a boat. French bureaucracy and family feuds prove to be equally hard to deal with.

Let's get the negatives out of the way: it's entirely shot with a hand-held camera (which calls for lots of close-ups and a rather limited range of points of view and shots), the editing is not so great (some imprecisions in continuity), and it could be about 15 minutes shorter.

Having said that, this is a little gem of a film. Unlike most contemporary mainstream cinema, here information is never spoon-fed to you, and each tiny bit of plot is slowly revealed through minute details and lengthy conversation. The close-ups allow for great intensity of characterisation, and each character feels well-outlined and personalised. It's a film that - like making couscous - requires time, but patience is rewarded. What you get ultimately is a warm family portrait, and a tragi-comic hommage to the Arab-French community of this little coastal town somewhere near Marseille.

However, despite the film's strong formal affiliation with a certain kind of world cinéma vérité, no great 'issue' is being discussed, no 'loaded' political point made here. Yes, there is unemployment for French-born Tunisians in favour of cheaper immigrant labour; there is a working fishing dock rapidly declining in favour of tourism and globalisation; there is an evident (if slight) class distinction between the French authorities and the dock workers and dwellers. But the social commentary is never pressed upon the spectator - probably the greatest departure from British cinema of this kind (think Ken Loach social realism), which, personally I don't enjoy much.

Without need to stake an overt claim for feminism, the smart, gorgeous, resourceful women in the community come out of this as its real driving force: they cook meals, clean houses, raise kids, plan projects, run hotels, and still find the time to dress up, dance, joke, flirt and conquer. The men, on the other hand, are laconically at the mercy of events - and seductions. They are absent and absent-minded; they womanise, lose jobs, forget crucial things, think impractically. Still, they are looked at with a sympathetic, if critical, eye.

It's also a great film about food, and the importance of food rituals within a congregation of people as a mighty unifying force, which bends desires and frustrations to its innate power: pleasure. The real protagonists then are the eponymous couscous grain and mullet fish: what they bring out in people and what they can do for a family when cooked 'with love' and eaten with pleasure. It's a vibrant movie, full of colour and feeling. You could smell the fish in the cinema, and feel the Mediterranean sunshine on you skin on a cold, rainy, London afternoon.

[Peter Bradshaw's review and plot details here; official website here.]


Technorati Tagged: La graine et le mulet; Couscous; Film review