83
Metascore
16 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100The New York TimesA.O. ScottThe New York TimesA.O. ScottAn entire family chronicle, along with four decades of French social and economic history, is recapitulated as a lavish, hectic dinner, complete with music and belly dancing. It will leave you stunned and sated, having savored an intimate and sumptuous epic of elation and defeat, jealousy and tenderness, life and death, grain and fish.
- 100Entertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumEntertainment WeeklyLisa SchwarzbaumThe title embraces the richness of Kechiche's beautiful film, which captures the rhythms of displacement and hardship, the bond of family meals, and even the daily routines of the magnificent women who are part of Slimane's life.
- 83The A.V. ClubScott TobiasThe A.V. ClubScott TobiasThe Secret Of The Grain stretches out at the relaxed pace of a seven-course meal, but at the end of it, Kechiche has squeezed the most he can out of percolating dramas within the family and he lets the audience get to know its members without needing to throw them all a subplot.
- 80New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanNew York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanKechiche takes his time, allowing us to know the characters as if we live next door. But be warned: for those who come to feel like a member of the family, the unexpected end may seem strikingly unfair.
- 80SalonAndrew O'HehirSalonAndrew O'HehirRichly enjoyable and consistently surprising.
- 75New York PostV.A. MusettoNew York PostV.A. MusettoThe cast is solid, with standout performances by first-timer Habib Boufares as Slimane.
- 70Village VoiceJ. HobermanVillage VoiceJ. HobermanEscalates into visceral allegory with an abandon and cruelty that seem positively Romanian. The last 30 minutes more than redeem the preceding two hours.
- 70The New YorkerDavid DenbyThe New YorkerDavid DenbyKechiche digs a good story out of the flux, and, in the movie's final forty minutes, the suspense is terrific.
- 60The Hollywood ReporterRay BennettThe Hollywood ReporterRay BennettA penchant for suffocating close-ups and an overabundance of scenes that go on far too long mar Abdellatif Kechiche's The Secret of the Grain, an otherwise engaging drama about an immigrant Arab family in France.
- 50VarietyVarietyAn overlong, dramatically unbalanced picture whose emotional wallop gets somewhat diffused.