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THE SECRET OF THE GRAIN Tunisian actor, writer and director Abdel Kechiche talks about his stunning new film Couscous which has been a surprise hit in France
‘With Couscous, which is set in the southern French port city of sete, I wanted to represent a social milieu, which I knew very well because I’d grown up there, and which hasn’t been represented on screen before. I think that when you make a film about a world you know very well and that you love and care about, that is communicated in the film, and other people are able to identify with what they’re seeing.
‘I also wanted to create a family on-screen that was based on my own family. I wanted to concentrate on the figure of the father Slimane [played by l-labib Boufares], who is made redundant from his job in the shipyards, and who decides to set up a couscous restaurant on a disused ship in the harbour. Slimane stands for my father and all those men of that generation who left their country of origin and who went somewhere else in order to work, so that the generations after them would have a better life. I wanted to portray a man who would represent the heroic dimensions of what these people did.
“The cast for Couscous is a mixture of professional and non- professional actors. I chose them because I thought they could identify with the characters. The choice of an actor is crucial - a false note even in a small role can trip the whole thing up. The rehearsal time with the actors is for me the foundation of the film. It’s important that everyone gets to know one another. I also bring the crew into the rehearsals, so that the barriers can come down and people can trust each other.
‘l’m not surprised that Couscous has been such a big success in France. There was so much energy and life amongst the people making it that I knew it wouldn’t pass unnoticed, even if it is two and a half hours long and it doesn’t have any major stars in it. For me French cinema leaves out whole swathes of the population.’ (Interview by Tom Dawson)
I Couscous, GFT, Glasgow from Fri 27—Thu 3 Jul. See review, above.
52 THE LIST 19 Jun—3 Jul 2008
DRAMA couscous (LA GRAINE ET LE MULET) 0.3.1,???“ 993’.-. _, _ _-_--
Filmmaker Abdel Kechiche builds on the promise that he displayed with 2003's L’Esquive by creating a drama similar in style and spirit to Vittorio De Sica‘s 1951 neorealist fantasy Miracle in Milan. The man in need of a miracle in the present- day French seaport town of Sete is 61 -year-old weary Maghrebi emigre Silmane (Habib Boufares). who has been made redundant after working for 35 years in a shipyard. Rather than retire. Slimane dreams of opening a North African restaurant. His complicated extended family, including ex~wife and numerous off- spring. all congregate at his house for fish couscous each Sunday and it's during one such dinner, a scene which feels like it is filmed in real time, that the various characters in his life reveal their twisted feelings towards each other. The banal chatter combined with a camera that cuts and thrusts between characters as they chomp unceremoniously on their food makes this extended scene as perversely engrossing as anything in Marco Ferreri's 1973 cult classic La Grande Bouffe. These seemingly incongruent emotions surprisingly cause majOr rifts once the action moves on from the immobile Sunday dinner to the itinerant attempts to open a restaurant. This depiction of Arab family life with all its attendant problems shares with comparable drama La Haine an empathy for immigrants and their struggle to be part of the patrie - with ‘Liberte. Egalite, Fraternite' now just words in the dust of history for anyone not French and white. (Kaleem Aftab)
I GFT, Glasgow from Fri 27 Jun— Thu 3 Jul. See interview, below.
DRAMA HORROR THE WAITING ROOM THE nums (1.5) 195???? 2!-
(18) 90min .0
Elderly Roger (Frank Finlay) sits in a suburban London train station, forlornly waiting for his dead wife to arrive. his presence providing the catalyst for a Brief Encounter-style chance meeting between Anna (Anne- Marie Duff) and Stephen (Ralf Little). Outside the railway station, the prospective couple's lives run on separate tracks. Anna returns to her seedy affair with selfish George (Rupert Graves). who is married to her best-friend and neighbour Jem (Zoe Telford), while Stephen goes back to caring for the infirm Helen (Phyllida Law). Anna and Stephen’s dissatisfaction with their lives suggests there could be something more to relationships than they previously imagined. but will ever they get their love on track?
Writer-director Roger Goldby made the Oscar—winning short It’s Good To Talk in 1998, but won't be picking up many prizes with this hackneyed scenario about the importance of holding out for someone special. The Waiting Room does conjure up some oldie-pathos through Finlay and Law. but strong acting can't meld the twee one-dimensionality of a Working Title rom-com with serious dramatic situations. The tagline. ‘An intelligent and distinctive film about love, fate. and being ready to meet the right person‘ reflects a desire for significance which The Waiting Room only rarely achieves. (Eddie Harrison) growing through the cracks. and soon I Selected release from Fri 20 Jun. the kids are being taunted and
. M 9,. a”.-- M. . tormented by the local plant life. The ‘1’”??qu "M"? ‘ "T!" flora and fauna not only has a nasty I w: way of worming its way into their A F bodies. but it also psychologically tortures them in the darkness by imitating their voices and even mimicking their mobile phones.
Handsomely produced by Dreamworks. Carter Smith's film is as consistently ludicrous as it sounds, and despite some decent acting and a few convincing gore effects. be warned: watching The Ruins is likely to dismantle your night. (Eddie Harrison) I General release from Fri 20 Jun.
From Hostel to Paradise Lost. there are obvious political reasons for the current glut of horror films featuring groups of American teenagers holidaying abroad who get picked off one-by-one by mysterious forces. But even Marshall McLuhan and Noam Chomsky combined couldn't find a meaningful subtext in The Ruins. a soul-crushineg silly effort which dares to depict Mayan temples filled with killer plants.
Adapting his own novel, writer Scott B Smith pitches Amy (Jena Malone). Jeff (Jonathan Tucker) and their airhead pals along a secret path to a mysterious pyramid guarded by taciturn natives. The locals murder one of their group in the hope of appeasing the bloodthirsty vines