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Jan 28, 2015
Slimane Beiji has spent most of his life working in the dockyard at Port Sète, first as an unregistered immigrant and then as a full-fledged citizen. Now in his latter years he finds he doesn’t have much to show for it—his company is cutting his hours causing an already precarious financial situation to turn dire, he’s become impotent with his girlfriend, and his adult children are the only bridge between him and his embittered ex-wife. His biggest regret however is the fact that he never managed to fulfill his lifelong wish of opening a floating restaurant (a veritable “ship of dreams”) specializing in “fish couscous”, a traditional dish his former spouse makes to perfection. Spurred on by his lover’s headstrong daughter Rym (a multiple-award winning performance by newcomer Hafsia Herzi) Slimane decides to gather his meagre resources and take a stab at that dream after all. Wading through a maze of municipal bureaucracy, not to mention a reluctant loan officer, Slim manages to secure a rusty old fishing boat and with the help of family and friends—including his girlfriend and ex-wife—the restaurant slowly becomes a reality. Throwing a fund-raising gala on the newly remodelled boat, Slimane invites one hundred of the town’s most influential bigwigs to come and sample his wares. But just as things seem to be going his way the unthinkable happens and it’s going to take a miracle or two, and perhaps a small sacrifice, to keep his dream from being destroyed for good. Writer-director Abdellatif Kechiche’s seriocomic parable about hope and adversity is presented with such natural energy and disarming dialogue that at times it sounds like an ad-libbed reality show. Characters swirl around each other offering encouragement or rebukes, gossiping around the dinner table, and occasionally offering profound insights into life, love, and the meaning of it all. Lead actor Habib Boufares plays Slim as if in a daze, a man who has seen too many disappointments to take much pleasure in a bit of luck when it presents itself. And nowhere is this more apparent than in the film’s astonishing multi-layered finale where we see a disheartened Slimane tormented, quite literally, by a trio of mocking Fates even as more powerful forces are at work on his floating eatery. At 150 minutes "Grain" takes its sweet time getting to the point and I must admit I found some of the prolonged banter tiresome, but this is a film that demands your full attention and once you get into its groove the journey proves to be one of those rare cinematic delicacies.