2 Best Movies to Watch by Bruno Lochet

Staff & contributors

The Secret of the Grain is a saga of the immigrant experience and a packed 151 minutes of diverse storylines and themes that could have each been a film on their own. 

Slimane Beiji is a Tunisian immigrant in the French port city of Sète. His large family consists of two units: his ex-wife Souad, with whom he has many children, and his current partner Latifa who own a run-down hotel where Slimani lives. Slimani gets fired from his shipyard job and is pushed by the children from his first marriage to return to Tunisia, where he can lead a quiet life. But Rym, his current partner’s daughter, convinces him that he can still be happy in France if he pursues his dream: to open a restaurant on a boat he owns that would serve his ex-wife’s unique couscous with fish recipe. Slimani chooses to rekindle his immigrant dream.

It's a beautiful and rich slice-of-life film about immigrant life in Southern France. Slimani's charachter is based on the filmmaker's father. 

Genre: Drama

Actor: Alice Houri, Benaïssa Ahaouari, Bouraouïa Marzouk, Bruno Lochet, Carole Franck, Hafsia Herzi, Hatika Karaoui, Henri Cohen, Mélèze Bouzid, Olivier Loustau, Sabrina Ouazani, Sami Zitouni

Director: Abdellatif Kechiche

Making a heist so unoriginal and uneventful is a feat, and Gold Brick manages to do both without missing a beat. None of the characters are particularly interesting or distinct enough to remember their names. The idea of stealing from a big corporation (usually a solid setup) has no bite because the motivations feel hollow and unrealized. Most of the "ingenious" slight of hands and master plans don't impress or stick, and later plot points' payoffs stay as lackluster as their setups. Crisp, saturated cinematography is pleasant on the eyes but not enough to stop them from glazing over.

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Actor: Agathe Rousselle, Antoine Gouy, Bruno Lochet, Grégoire Colin, Igor Gotesman, Irina Muluile, Ludovik, Nicolas de Lavergne, Nina Meurisse, Raphaël Quenard, Slimane Dazi, Stéphan Wojtowicz, Youssef Hajdi

Director: Jérémie Rozan