Thursday, May 14, 2009

Secrets of the Grain

France

Very fine film. We immerse ourselves into the lives of some Algerian  folks who are faced with economic change in a southern French port (Marseilles?), adapt by coming together as a family and opening a restaurant based on their native cuisine.

This worked in spite of the fact that there were many characters whose lives we had to understand. The director made us care by using long takes of individual scenes that allowed us to see each character in his interaction with the others, thus giving us a sense of who everyone was and how they related to each other. Compare this technique with the quick-cutting confusion of A Christmas Tale. Slick isn't better.

Nice work.

7


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