Little White Lies magazine

Slimane (Habib Boufares), a quiet docks worker of North African descent, has lost his job and is living on welfare in a tiny room in a dump of a pension. He’s broke, his sons say he should go back ‘home’, and his ex-wife won’t take him back. Stubborn and proud, Slimane devises one last plan to salvage what’s left of his name and get his family back on side: to open a restaurant, selling the legendary couscous made by the ex’s dexterous hands. With a documentary look and feel, mundane conversations over dinner become the prism through which bigger issues are discussed: family discord, social inequality, unemployment and, most importantly, the struggles of an immigrant family in an often hostile and unwelcoming land. While a tad too long and dramatically unbalanced (the film ends without a glimpse of climax or resolution), Kechiche’s latest effort offers a poignant look at quotidian life in immigrant Europe.