La Graine et le Mulet (Couscous)

Abdellatif Kechiche’s very ambitious, and perhaps successful, prizewinner of 2007
Little to say really about the technical side; uses handheld, huge amount of jerking, flying about, pretty quick cuts. Basically, pan and scan, wouln’t be surprised if some scenes had multiple camera set-ups. Does use the long take to bring out performances that are both well underplayed, and capable of frightening intensity, in the realist vein.
This isn’t a do-down; there is, in some thoughtful framings and rythms, clearly some thought and use in the camera. It does its job here.
The film sets us with multiple narratives, but not cutting too quickly between; giving time for each not so much to evolve, as to be made apparent, to work themselves out in the emotions of the characters. Nice style of not sticking too much to one character (though there are leads), even moving to have individual long scenes of bit-part players.
Nice narrative drive throughout, making one concentrate on what is in front of you.
The world we enter could have got too comfortable; and has that side to it to; the celebration of traditional values, and of food. Yet this film is good enough not to give easy answers; suffering is there, perhaps it is the dominant theme, and there isn’t any way around it. We don’t just mean the casual racism the family suffers; but the tortures, the pettiness that event hose we have come to understand inflict on each other.
This piles up in a horrible incident with an hour to go. The viewer is, frankly, put in their powerlessness through a kind of agony. It is debatable whether this is necessary. The argument that it is would be on the ability to achieve a kind of absolution in the ‘poor meal’. Not a tying up; but a qualitative change in how the viewer reads the situation.
The end does well not to tie up/ work itself out too much, though could probably have done without the last couple of shots. Overall, though, the essence of the interlinking characters, power relations, wishes and people come together in incredible powerful tableaus. An excellent piece of work that sets itself a huge task; to explore an extended family and, through it, an experience of living in their (various generation immigrant status clearly being a motif) culture. It manages, while remaining an excellent experience to simply watch, to take us to this place with real richness.