[Abdel] Kechiche knows his subject and the film reflects the warmth and understanding with which he views it, though it is inordinately long at 2 hrs and 30 minutes.

| Apr 30, 2019

This depiction of Arab family life with all its attendant problems shares with comparable drama La Haine an empathy for immigrants.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 4, 2018

Almost certainly the best movie in SIFF 2008, Abdellatif Kechiche's follow-up to Games of Love & Chance burrows into a tight-knit Tunisian immigrant community in a small port town in the south of France.

| Aug 21, 2017

The best of the film is expressed between the beats of the plot and the meandering conversations around dinner tables or over drinks on the sidewalk tables of a hotel bar. It's as joyous and genuine a portrait of a community as you'll see in the movies.

| May 12, 2017

Kechiche may subscribe to Renoir's "Everyone has his reasons," but here he shoots the action with a nervous tension that's more evocative of Pialat.

| Nov 14, 2013

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 17, 2011

A beautifully painted portrait of everyday Arab immigrant life in France among a large dysfunctional family.

| Original Score: A- | Apr 27, 2011

... a magnificent journey through culture and family and community.

| Aug 11, 2010

Many great suspense sequences have been built around props: a bomb under the table, explosives in the back of the truck, a nuclear launch code. And now couscous.

| Original Score: 8/10 | Aug 1, 2010

When the film, as it must, comes to an end after two and a half hours, you won't be ready; the bond made to this family makes its sudden absence feel downright brutal. [Blu-ray]

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 19, 2010

Secret of the Grain may be the most ambitious, complex, and suspenseful film about a feast ever to be served at the movies.

| Original Score: 8.5/10 | May 11, 2010

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.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 10, 2009

Time stretches out to the limits of endurance, Slimane's and ours, and there are moments toward the conclusion of this picture when you will want to scream and throw things at the screen, but it's mesmerizing. When it does end, suddenly, it feels a little

| Jun 13, 2009

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.

| May 7, 2009

A dark and hilarious parable of human absurdity.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 23, 2009

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.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Apr 17, 2009

Everyone figures in a masterfully paced final act that's hypnotic, genuinely suspenseful and emotionally complex.

| Mar 20, 2009

Writer-director Abdel Kechiche has wrought a definitive statement on how it feels to live in a subculture.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 13, 2009

The Secret of the Grain takes one man, his children, their spouses and babies, his ex-wife, his girlfriend, her daughter, and his friends and turns it all into a masterpiece about the strange power of food -- to heal, unite, exasperate.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 19, 2009

A long but always engaging movie, intimately framed and exuberantly acted by a mixed cast of amateurs and professionals.

Full Review | Jan 30, 2009