A cine-verite tour-de-force.
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10/27/07
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The Secret of the Grain (2008)
90
%
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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
An overlong, dramatically unbalanced pic whose emotional wallop gets somewhat diffused.
10/27/07
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
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
After two and a half hours, The Secret of the Grain, ends, as arbitrarily as it began.
10/18/08
The richness of The Secret of the Grain lies in the close, tireless, enthusiastic attention it pays to the most mundane daily tasks.
12/24/08
Top CriticWarmly 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
Aside from a slight flabbiness ... Kechiche is to be praised for exploring the nature of change on a personal and a community level -- and packing the result with some emotional wallop.
06/16/08
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.
06/17/08
A long but always engaging movie, intimately framed and exuberantly acted by a mixed cast of amateurs and professionals.
01/30/09
Though not all of the film's 151 minutes feel indispensable, the story and mise-en-scene of this immigrant family's daily struggles are so involving that it is still well worth seeing on the big screen.
10/22/07
[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 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
This is both fascinating domestic melodrama and damning indictment of the intolerance that can exist across all sections of society.
07/25/08
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
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
Some unusually strong ensemble performances deliver a microcosm of Tunisians living outside their native land in France.
12/18/08
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 CriticThe Secret of the Grain is crowd-pleasing in the sense that the story and characters are easy to identify with...belongs somewhere between the arthouse and the multiplex.
12/10/08
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
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