![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/a4/96/002296a4_medium.jpeg)
La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]
![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/a4/96/002296a4.jpeg)
The Secret of the Grain (2007)
2xDVD9 Custom | VIDEO_TS | NTSC 16:9 | Artwork | 02:34:24 | 7,81 Gb + 7,57 Gb
Audio: French-Arabic AC3 5.1 @ 448 Kbps | Subs: English; added: Spanish, German, French, Portuguese
Genre: Drama | The Criterion Collection #527
2xDVD9 Custom | VIDEO_TS | NTSC 16:9 | Artwork | 02:34:24 | 7,81 Gb + 7,57 Gb
Audio: French-Arabic AC3 5.1 @ 448 Kbps | Subs: English; added: Spanish, German, French, Portuguese
Genre: Drama | The Criterion Collection #527
Director: Abdellatif Kechiche
Stars: Habib Boufares, Hafsia Herzi, Farida Benkhetache
The winner of four César awards, including best picture and director, Abdellatif Kechiche’s The Secret of the Grain is a stirring drama about the daily joys and struggles of a bustling French-Arab family. It has the texture of a documentary but a classic, almost Shakespearean structure: when patriarch Slimane acts on his wish to open a portside restaurant specializing in his ex-wife’s couscous and fish, the extended clan’s passions and problems explode, leading to an engrossing, suspenseful climax. With sensitivity and grit, The Secret of the Grain celebrates the role food plays in family life and gets to the core of contemporary immigrant experience.
A big winner on both the international film festival circuit (it won a Special Jury Prize at Venice) and at the Césars (the French equivalent of the Oscars), where it won four awards including Best Picture, actor-turned-director Abdellatif Kechiche’s third film The Secret of the Grain (La graine et le mullet) is a close, fascinating examination of tensions in a large immigrant family in the south of France. Simultaneously an intimate character study and a broad depiction of the ever-evolving immigrant experience, Kechiche’s film gathers force as it moves slowly forward, amassing a wealth of detail that culminates in a 40-minute climax that is as tense and suspenseful as anything Hitchcock ever put on screen, but without any sense of artifice.![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/ac/96/002296ac_medium.jpeg)
La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]
![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]]()
The film is completely fictional, and Kechiche’s greatest accomplishment (and that of his amazing cast of both professional and nonprofessional actors, whose characters feel captured, rather than played) may very well be the sheer invisibility of the filmmaking process; more so than any film in recent memory, it achieves a lived-in naturalness that invites the viewer to not just sit back and watch, but take a seat at the table.![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/ad/96/002296ad_medium.jpeg)
La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]
![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]]()
The story centers around Slimane Beiji (Habib Boufares), the grave, 61-year-old father of a family of Arab immigrants who have made their home in the Mediterranean port city of Séte for the past four decades. During that time the family has grown and cracked, with Slimane’s two daughters and two sons growing up, getting married, and having children of their own while his own marriage to Souad (Bouraouia Marzouk), an intimidating matriarch and fantastic cook, has dissolved. Since then, Slimane has taken up with Latifa (Hatika Karaoui), an independent younger woman who owns the mousy hotel in which he rents a room.![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/ae/96/002296ae_medium.jpeg)
La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]
![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]]()
At the beginning of the film Slimane finds himself out of work at the shipyard where he has invested the past 35 years of his life, mostly because he is older and therefore slower and considered expendable despite his many years of service. With some prodding from Latifa’s feisty teenage daughter Rym (Hafsia Herzi, in an award-winning debut), Slimane decides to fulfill a lifelong dream of opening a restaurant, a difficult endeavor that requires contributions from his entire family, including Souad, whose fish couscous will be the signature house dish (the film’s original French title, which translates to The Seed and the Mullet, is a direct reference to this dish and the important role food plays in the film).![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/af/96/002296af_medium.jpeg)
La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]
![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]]()
The key to Slimane’s dream, and the underlying poignancy of his endeavor, is that it is not for himself that he wishes to open this restaurant, but rather for his children, so that he may leave something for them. Laid off and fundamentally alone despite those around him, Slimane feels used up and impotent and lacking in any real accomplishments. In his mind, a man must leave behind some kind of legacy, and his separation from his family due to his and Souad’s divorce only serves to further isolate him, which is emphasized in a lengthy sequence in the middle of the film when the family gathers for a lively Sunday afternoon meal while he sits alone in his hotel room.![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/b0/96/002296b0_medium.jpeg)
La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]
![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]]()
Kechiche, who was born in Tunisia and raised in France and therefore knows this cultural terrain from personal experience, allows the characters to emerge out of the daily rituals of life that are, in essence, the film’s true subject. And, while keeping track of all the loose storylines is confusing at first, we soon begin to recognize the familiar, interwoven dilemmas of marital infidelity, the challenges of child-rearing, and the manner in which siblings relate to and compete with each other, all of which is complicated by Slimane’s relationship with Rym, who he treats as (and refers to as) his own daughter.![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/b1/96/002296b1_medium.jpeg)
La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]
![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]]()
The story, which Kechiche unfolds with long sequences of handheld camerawork and intimate close-ups, gradually builds momentum as Slimane refurbishes a large boat for his restaurant and stages an invitation-only free dinner for a hundred friends, family, and potential investors; it is, in essence, him putting everything on the line with a singular event, which will either make or break him. We watch and wait, then, knowing that something at some point will go wrong, and when it eventually does, it begins a process of tragic unraveling that Kechiche uses for both conventional movie suspense and as an extended metaphor for the difficulties of the older immigrant generation. It is an absorbing, gut-twisting experience, even as it is leavened with the film’s close attention to character behavior and atmospheric detail.![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/b2/96/002296b2_medium.jpeg)
La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]
![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]]()
The film’s abrupt ending seems almost calculated to generate debate: Is it a cheat in which Kechiche escapes the web he’s spun without answering any questions, or a brilliantly designed ploy to force us to come to grips with not only the complexities of the lives we’ve been watching for the past two and a half hours, but also the simplistic notion embraced by too many movies that all problems have a conventional set of answers on which we can all agree? This is a film whose story extends far beyond the parameters of its running time.
![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/ac/96/002296ac.jpeg)
![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/ad/96/002296ad.jpeg)
![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/ae/96/002296ae.jpeg)
![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/af/96/002296af.jpeg)
![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/b0/96/002296b0.jpeg)
![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/b1/96/002296b1.jpeg)
![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/b2/96/002296b2.jpeg)
![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/b3/96/002296b3_medium.jpeg)
La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]
![La graine et le mulet (2007) [The Criterion Collection #527] [ReUp]](https://pixhost.icu/avaxhome/b3/96/002296b3.jpeg)
Special Features:
- High-definition digital master, approved by director Abdellatif Kechiche
- New video interview with Kechiche
- Sueur, Kechiche’s extended reedit of the climactic belly-dancing sequence, featuring a new video introduction by the director
- New video interview with film scholar Ludovic Cortade
- Excerpt from a 20 heures television interview with Kechiche and actress Hafsia Herzi
- Video interviews with Herzi, actress Bouraouïa Marzouk, and the film’s musicians
- Theatrical trailer
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film critic Wesley Morris
Note! Subs added only on Disc 1; All extras are on Disc 2.
Many Thanks to Original uploader.
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