This overlong but absorbing drama turns an intensely detail-oriented eye to a Franco-Arabic community in a depressed seaside town. Slimane (Habib Boufares), a freshly laid-off dockworker, is the shy and stoic center of a raucous extended family. Prodded by his stubborn but doting stepdaughter (the magnetic young actress Hafsia Herzi), he takes tentative steps toward realizing a dream: opening a restaurant that sells his ex-wife's famous fish couscous (the secretive grain of the title). Some abrupt transitions punctuate the film's long stretches of dense, Altmanesque chatter, but director Abdellatif Kechiche captures his milieu just right—the gossip, the good food, the endless gutting and eating of fish. (NR) JULIA WALLACE Egyptian: 3:30 p.m.
Visioneers
Judy Greer, James LeGros, Zach Galifianakis, D.W. Moffett, and Seattle's own John Keister: Man, what a promising cast for this quirky, locally shot indie comedy, set in a near future where everyone hates their corporate drone jobs to the point where they're literally exploding. And man, does this movie, a half-dozen laughs aside, absolutely suck. If one is to pull off this high a concept, the dialogue and pacing had best crackle. And I'll be damned if this isn't among the slowest comedies ever committed to celluloid. Plus, the storyline—corporations bad!—just feels so fucking stale and repetitious, especially after Office Space, The Office, et al. Bro-combo Jared and Brandon Drake would have done far better to focus on the marital conflicts between Greer and the increasingly apathetic Galifianakis. But instead, they aim higher—and miss, wildly. (NR) MIKE SEELY Egyptian: 9:30 p.m. (Also: 4 p.m. Sat., June 14.)
Friday, June 13
Accelerating America
SIFF
The remarkable
Italian Sonetàula
(see Friday).
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This earnest documentary highlights the Urban Collaborative Accelerated Program (or UCAP), an alternative junior-high school in Rhode Island. UCAP helps preteens failing one or more grades get back on track. (Do all of them make it? No spoilers here.) The movie follows three students with troubled backgrounds for a year. Their tearful struggles are captured in extreme closeup for the emotional manipulation of you, the unsuspecting SIFFgoer. As the days until graduation are counted on-screen, there's the (hopefully) unintentional sense that these kids are competing against one another. It also feels like a reality TV contest, seeing which pupil's parental neglect and dysfunctional home life is the most horrifying. The film's noble cause is to shed light on poverty and to ask us to question the American educational system. But subjecting a trio of emotionally traumatized kids to this kind of scrutiny just seems sad. (NR) FRANK PAIVA Harvard Exit: 7 p.m. (Also: SIFF Cinema, 1:30 p.m. Sat., June 14.)
Before I Forget
Call me an ageist homophobe, but I find the idea of watching an entire movie in which a 58-year-old gay man morosely performs oral sex on a parade of rent-boys depressing. Thanks to Strand Releasing, the French Before I Forget is getting a limited U.S. release, so maybe there's a bigger market for gloomy-eyed blowjobs than I imagine. Pointless from start to finish, the film is an endurance exercise for the ages. Pierre (Jacques Nolot) is an author trying to block out his friend's death by any possible method. Nolot also directed and wrote the movie, which would be impressive if it were any good. He's most successful in his acting, which is what he's best known for anyway. It's unlikely, however, that Before I Forget would've been better if someone else had directed it. It's a sinking ship from the start, not even partially redeemed by the young male eye-candy that it's (falsely) promoting. On top of all that, it boasts the stupidest ending of any film I've seen at SIFF so far. (NR) FRANK PAIVA Pacific Place: 9:30 p.m. (Also: 4 p.m. Sun., June 15.)
Cherry Blossoms—Hanami
Director Doris Dörrie has accomplished a feat no other filmmaker at SIFF could manage: She's made a film about a troubled marriage and bad family life that's emotionally involving, fast-paced, and a joy to sit through. No, really. I'm just as surprised as you are. Trudi and Rudi are an older German couple who have become a nuisance to their adult children. When Rudi is diagnosed with a serious illness, the two realize how little they know each other, and begin to make amends. The plot is full of little twists I won't spoil (also avoid the overly descriptive SIFF program guide). Just trust that you'll be crying by the end and calling everyone you know, telling them to go see it. The movie has a distributor for limited release, but see it now in case it doesn't play beyond New York. Cherry Blossoms ends with the most stunning and beautiful sequence from any film in the festival so far. You'd be remiss not to catch it while you can. (NR) FRANK PAIVA Uptown: 6:30 p.m. (Also: Cinerama, 11:55 a.m. Sun., June 15.)
Chrysalis
There have not been enough violent action movies or police thrillers this year at SIFF, and Chrysalis is too little, too late, in both regards. It's also set in a near-futuristic Paris, but not far enough in the future. The cops are like iCops, who wave iGuns and iBadges. Their desks are screens like your iMac. At a mysterious medical clinic, heart surgery is performed with modem and virtual-reality gloves (shades of Minority Report). It's like C.S.I. Kubrick crossed with Phillip K. Dick: Memories are stolen and implanted on chips for storage; plastic surgery has everyone looking like a supermodel; and the government is probably more evil than the Slavic mobsters who traffic in milky-white drugs, virtual sex chambers (Sleeper's orgasmatron? Hel-lo?), and milky-white flesh from the old Soviet Bloc. (Even in the future, it seems, there will be an endless supply of women to traffic from the old Soviet Bloc.) Chrysalis begins with two strong scenes in a row, but the subsequent stitching of police procedural and medical thriller is way too sloppy; you'll guess the connecting tissue long before the cop (a very effective Albert Dupontel). I, for one, would have no problem with a remake starring Bruce Willis and directed by Tony Scott. (NR) BRIAN MILLER Egyptian: 11:55 p.m. (Also: Cinerama, 10 p.m. Sat., June 14.)
Hidden Face
