Kechiche projects onto the viewer an immigrant population's impatient longing for liberty, equality and success, concocting a dish that is no more bitter or half-baked than cultural exile itself.
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06/17/08
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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.
Rated: Not Rated
Genre: Dramas
Theatrical Release:2007
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Reviews for The Secret of the Grain
[A] captivating film.
10/18/08
The film manages to be both an homage to women and a heartbreaking cultural commentary, and it's intense.
10/03/08
A robust drama about and old man with a dream who is helped by a smart teenager and his large Franco-Arab family.
12/24/08
The film works on a slow burn but by the end it has become utterly engrossing.
03/14/08
...a boisterous, sprawling affair with time outs for small intimacies and a last act that defies expectations.
07/09/08
Through his superlative cast of performers, Kechiche's family portrait is a doting record of the innate resiliency of this beloved community.
04/23/08
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
[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 never slows, always engages, may continue too long, but ends too soon. It is made of life itself.
01/22/09
Top CriticIt’s Kechiche’s living, breathing portrait of a second-generation immigrant culture that’s The Secret of the Grain’s real success story.
04/24/08
The French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche is that rare thing at the movies these days: an intelligent humanist.
01/29/09
A year of uncommonly strong French releases hits its peak with Abdellatif Kechiche's richly entertaining and complex humanistic saga about an extended French-Arab family in the south of France.
12/17/08
Give some patience to The Secret of the Grain and the rewards are there for the reaping.
10/03/08
Top CriticEveryone figures in a masterfully paced final act that's hypnotic, genuinely suspenseful and emotionally complex.
03/20/09
Warmly magical... Building to a tender Big Night-like feast where the gang's all here, suspense is as thick and exciting as communal joy, and a single sexy surprise proves one of the greatest moments in film this year...
04/28/08
French-Tunisian writer-director-actor Abdellatif Kechiche's The Secret of the Grain is a sprawling yet intimate tale set among the Arab working class of the Mediterranean port Sète.
12/23/08
Top CriticSome unusually strong ensemble performances deliver a microcosm of Tunisians living outside their native land in France.
12/18/08
Never 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
Top CriticA dark and hilarious parable of human absurdity.
04/23/09
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