La graine et le mulet / Couscous mit Fisch (France 2007)

I have a movie to recommend! "La graine et le mulet" is set in southern France, in a pretty deplorable setting for starters - a breaking-down harbour scenery, with people living crammed-ly in GDR-looking apartment buildings losing their jobs one by one. The ship you see on the picture is the corroded cargo ship after it has been turned into a lovely Arabian restaurant with lots of potentiality (couscous and red mullet!) by Sliman and his family. (Sliman is the old guy in the picture who gets fired for being inefficient. He has a wonderfully contemplative look in his eyes.) You cannot see the apartment buildings in the picture, although they make for some quite poetic imagery towards the end of the movie. 

What I liked most about the movie is its way of realistic story-telling that reminded me of "This is England". It's not as harsh but it also must be made by someone (name's Abdel Kechiche) who knows these people in real life. (For instance, the clash between the families of the Arab immigrants and the French officials is hilariously accurate - for all its sadness in the storyline.) With the scenes being seemingly uncut and lots of characters depicted going on and on in their chitchat or crying for minutes on end (great acting especially on the part of the casual and straightforward girl "Rym" - Hafsia Herzi, also in the pic above) many of your cinematically trained expectations go down the drain. Especially at the end! Daniel wondered whether they ran out of money... but no, it's just that you cannot count on everyone to work according to plan nor for fortune to fill the gaps to make a happy ending, not even for great dreams. Nicely, the lose ends in "La graine et le mulet" leave a lot to one's phantasy to complete.