The Secret of the Grain (Abdel Kechiche, 2007)

An old world is fast disappearing in the southern shores of France. Abdel Kechiche’s momentarily elegiac but ultimately celebratory The Secret of the Grain opens on this note of lamentation. Everywhere are signs of obsolescence and decay -- floating junk, rotten boats -- as the camera surveys the fast-changing harbor of Sete. We are listening to an unsentimental annotation of a tour guide about the transformation of this maritime corner on the Mediterranean. Gone is the fish crier, he says, the man who announces the day’s catch. He has been replaced by the mechanical proclamations of computers. Here to one side of the harbor are the mountains of detritus and scrap-iron of old factories. “There used to be ovens in France,” comments the guide, referring to the closure of heavy industries. As if to locate the displaced humans in this equation, he proceeds to describe the torturous, 3-month excursions of old tuna fishers to far-away oceans.

Surely this casual commentary is insufficiently convincing, so the camera cuts to the graying figure of Slimane, a faithful shipyard worker, to give these sad realities a human face. We see him just at the instant when he is summarily eased out of his 35-year job. Slimane is a throwback to the old concierge in Murnau’s The Last Laugh, made obsolete after years of faithful service. In stunned silence, Slimane accepts his fate, silently incredulous that an old, artisanal job such as his can find a quick and equally qualified replacement. The truth is, latter-day economics are striking roots and have made manual labor expendable and his services dispensable. We learn the other manifestations of this new but ruthless and cut-throat world order: the preference for new and illegal immigrants as the workforce where they are needed as they present fewer complications and more profit to employers. As commented on elsewhere in the film, the new capitalists are shifting to more lucrative and less-labor-intensive, post-industrial ventures.

This talk can be all densely suffocating for a 151-minute film and Kechiche shifts to less mechanic, more domestic gears, as he follows Slimane around. Taking his cue from Robert Guediguian’s sociological studies of the working class strata of Marseilles, writer-director Kechiche proceeds to documenting the daily lives of immigrant Arabs in this seaside town in southern France. But lest one forgets, some of the quasi-documentary feel must also derive from Kechiche’s previous film, L’Esquive. It’s a familiarity with this mode of filmmaking that allows him to trace the reticulations of the Arab immigration and assimilation with relative ease.

Whether observing the gatherings of Slimane’s former wife Souad and their four children, and the protective care the graying man receives from his new woman, Latifa, and her feisty daughter Rym, Kechiche never fails to introduce an underlying commentary on the broader picture. His prime narrative strategy is linguistic metaphor. Gathering to partake of a meal of couscous, their dialogue is very pointed and empathic in expounding, for instance, the subject of disposable diapers – a thinly-veiled allusion to the disposability of Slimane in the new economy. Another: Couscous, they remark meaningfully, is the product of love, a labor of love, meant to reference the human touch invested by old artisans.

As the film wears on, the accent soon falls on the family and its crucial role in many aspects of life, at least in Slimane's life. What starts out with the solitary, dour figure of this man soon gives way to a lively ensemble of his extended families and the Arab section of Sete. They may find it irresistible to talk behind Slimane’s back, but there is genuine solidarity originating in these tight-knit circles in his hour of need. The consequences of documentary closeness, however, are such that we are made to witness, for instance, the extra-marital indiscretions of his son Majid and the scene-stealing disaffection of his Russian wife, Julia. We don’t fail to listen to Rym, almost like Slimane’s surrogate daughter, as she defends the old man from his unfeeling sons and often acts as his mouthpiece.

Much of the film’s engaging and endearing payload, however, comes in the last section of the film, when Slimane undertakes a plan to turn an old, dilapidated ship into a couscous restaurant. There is gripping suspense in anticipating whether his efforts will come to fruition on his restaurant’s opening night. But The Secret of the Grain does not fixate on single-handed heroism. To be blunt about it, Slimane comes across as an almost pathetic, ineffectual persona, and there’s a literally breath-taking allusion to De Sica’s Bicycle Thief towards the film’s end that highlights this, as he tries to run after and retrieve a stolen motorcycle.

An allegory about solidarity and the communal values of an older world, The Secret of the Grain sees a sincere volunteerism and a closing of ranks at the film's crucial juncture. Perhaps meant as stabs at the patriarchal nature of Arab societies, many of the well-meaning acts are the gestures of women. Don’t fail to watch through to the end; multivalent and polyphonic, this film makes simultaneous points that are brought home at the conclusion. Full of carousing, music and belly-dancing, the suspenseful – have I used the word yet? -- ending rounds out a tale well-told. In a world fast metamorphosing and phasing out the need for human touch, there is hope in homespun goodness yet.

L'Esquive (Abdel Kechiche, 2003)

I remember the civil tremors that rocked Paris and other major suburbs across France in October and November 2005. They would be televised to us from half a world away in the form of harrowing, post-apocalyptic images on the evening news. Shots of burning cars and public buildings, scenes of youths fighting pitch battles with riot police—all still linger in my mind. They marked a social upheaval that recalled the uprisings of May 1968 and prompted fears of government overthrow. It all seems to have stemmed from the deadly electrocution of two minority teenagers perceived to have been caused by brutal police persecution. It dredged up and brought to the fore decades of long-simmering resentment by marginalized masses, mainly North Africans and other émigrés, who had suffered from racism and xenophobia.

Abdel Kechiche’s L’Esquive, shot almost prophetically in 2003, paints the grim picture in one of the disenfranchised housing projects where many of the minorities have been relegated. This film depicts life at the periphery, the brutalized conditions of the ghettos arising from state neglect and public paranoia. In French, esquive is a sporting term that refers to a sidestep. In Kechiche’s film, it is about Muslim teenagers learning to navigate the everyday dangers of the banlieues. Shot properly in cinema-verite style – in the manner of Raymond Depardon and Frederick Wiseman – L’Esquive is a documentary of adversity and resiliency disguised as fiction, capturing graphically the pent-up and misplaced energies of its young subjects. It is equally made memorable and resonant by the naturalistic performances of its ensemble cast: all of them seem to be non-professionals playing their own lives.

At the film’s center is the budding young love between Krimo, an inarticulate hood, and Lydia, a glib, indomitable theatre actress. But we know the prospects of romance here seem false and out of place, they may not be forthcoming, and yet we are glad that this film is not about extreme displays of violence either. We don’t even mind that all of the characters seem to be screaming at the top of their lungs each time they speak. (It seems to be the norm: even friends engage each other in these seemingly uncivil ways). There are no death tolls mounting here, but this is a film that paradoxically conveys its points subtly: we know at the end who will most likely live less-than-peaceful destinies and those who will execute the appropriate esquive.

What L’Esquive captures instead is the tough-as-grits explosion of language. At every turn, there is the prospect of heated altercation. This is Kechiche’s sense of proxy violence, his fiery brand of pacifism and diplomacy: rage and anger transmuted and expressed in words. Krimo’s father is behind bars and is only mentioned in passing. We know that Krimo is in a gang, too, but all we witness of him is his brooding ways, his often funny inability to articulate his thoughts and feelings. Much of the violence happens offscreen: Kechiche insulates us from its easy spectacle. It is enough to pit his characters in the dialectics of the streets for us to get a sense of their unsettled, unnerving lives. They snarl like lions; their voices growl; and their idiom is not fit for the faint-hearted. And yet they are not afraid to laugh and cry, to express their fears and their hesitations.

The best that L’Esquive offers to the viewer is the value of sublimation. Characters like Lydia and her ‘homeys’ devote their all to the theatre and at film’s end, there is a sense of their assimilation of social skills that will help them integrate into wider society. Lydia in particular goes around in a period costume – her comfort, escapist blanket? – in order to internalize her role in a Marivaux play. It is enough to intrigue Krimo, who drops his old girlfriend and tries his hand at acting. But as the drama professor points out the thesis to Marivaux’s Triumph of Love: the much-hardened, much-brutalized Krimo is too much a product of a violent upbringing to take on the role of the harlequin. And yet like the-once-diffident Lydia, Krimo would stand an even chance of redemption if he just kept at it long enough. If he just kept at it long enough.

L’Esquive won 4 Cesar Awards in 2005, including one for Best Film.