There is a Chinese proverb saying that "every family has a book that is hard to read." The Secret of the Grain by Abdel Kechiche tells one of such complicated family stories. We have Slimane (pictured on the poster), a taciturn father divorced from his ex-wife, Souad, who is exceptional in making fish couscous. After being let go from the shipyard where Slimane worked most of his life, he decided to run a restaurant on a boat (pictured on the poster), selling fish couscous made by his ex-wife. To complicate things, Slimane lives in a rented room in a port-side hotel ran by his lover, Latifa, and her daughter, Rym (pictured on the poster).

Running a restaurant on a boat is itself complicated: acquiring a bank loan would need a strong business plan, preferbaly endorsed by a professional accountant; applying a permit to dock the boat permanently at a port would depend on whether there is any vacancy, and commercial boats have higher priority to fill a vacancy over a restaurant boat; finally, France has one of the world's strictest standards of restaurant hygiene.

The final resolution that Slimane came up with is to host a party on his boat, where everyone would taste the magical fish couscous. Hopefully, everyone would then understand that the fish couscous is the strong business plan, the reason why his restaurant boat should have higher priority to fill a vacancy, and the proof of compliance to the world's strictest standards of restaurant hygiene.

Alas, even the final resolution is made complicated because a crucial ingredient is missing--the grain of couscous. The director masterfully intertwines family matters with bureaucracy and the fish couscous, resulting in a film that strikes the audience as hard to read as every family's hard-to-read book.

See also:

• Official site (French)