I'm going to miss Dunkin' Donuts when I leave New England. There seems to be one on every street corner in this part of the country, and I've found they are perfect places to hang out before movies, for an hour and even more. The coffee is good, and they are very well-lit with large windows---perfect for comfortable reading.
Best of all, they make a great little egg and cheese sandwich that costs just over two bucks, and that you can get any time, day or night. I could practically live off of them.
Usually I like to get the croissant version of the sandwich. Last Tuesday evening when I was in West Newton, I ordered one. The clerk, of Indian extraction, told me that they were out of croissants. This sometimes happens late in the day.
"O.K., I'll have it on a bagel---plain." There are always plenty of those.
It was the second time I'd been in that particular Dunkin' Donuts, the first time having been when I was in West Newton last December to see Frozen River. I'm a creature of habit.
This time, however, the sunlight was still lingering in the sky, and the weather was much warmer. It was a beautiful spring evening. With a little time to spare, I took my bagel sandwich out into the evening and ate it while sitting on the steps of a bank.
One of the disappointments when I went to Frozen River was that I was not given a ticket, since the machine was broken. This time the mechanical apparatus correctly spit out the little piece of paper for me. My collection had grown by one.
Like last time, the showing was in one of the upstairs auditoriums in this fifty-year-old multiplex. But unlike last time, the auditorium had modern comfortable seats, instead of the stiff, traditional kind. It was a lot easier on my back.
I had gotten there about fifteen minutes early to see Secret of the Grain. It had been showing for several weeks at various theaters around Boston, and I had been playing chicken with the listings, knowing I wanted to see it. But I kept putting it off. Finally I decided that I wasn't going to wait anymore. Another week and it might be gone.
I was the only one in the auditorium. A lonely mylar birthday balloon hugged the ceiling by the screen. The movie had gotten rave reviews. Although it had been playing for over a month, I still thought it was poignant that in all the Boston metropolitan area, with all its millions of souls, I was the only person who wanted to see this movie this evening, for its sole showing in the only theater where it was playing.
Often I'm by myself at theaters, but that is usually at matinees at multiplexes, for movies in wide release. In this case, it truly was a showing just for me.
What to say about this movie? It is just freakin' awesome, one of the best pieces of cinematic storytelling I have seen in the past year, to be sure.
It was the first French film I had seen in several months, as I had gotten slightly less adventurous lately, and it was good to escape the Hollywood formulae for the evening. It always amazes me the differences in the Poetics of American and French films.
Or not. Sometimes they only seem different on the surface.
The story takes place on the Mediterranean coast of France, in a port town near the city of Montpelier. In the opening scene, we are aboard a tourist boat. A young man, a tour guide, is distracted from his work and goes off to have sex with a female passenger.
Immediately we switch to an older North African immigrant, Slimane (Habib Boufare) who is being told that his long-time services at a shipyard are no longer needed. The story then follows this man. We meet his ex-wife, and get to see his dingy apartment.
The opening scene, of the two characters having sex on the tourist boat, of grows mysterious as it seems to have been forgotten in the story. Who were those characters?
At the half-hour mark, at which time all Hollywood movies must have presented the essential premise of the story, I still had no idea what the hell this story was really about. It was a slow languid introduction, so different, and so pleasurable. Everything was unwinding at a much different pace.
Then bang, a few seconds later, right as the thirty minute mark passed, the young man from the opening scene reappears in a crowed apartment scene. It turns out that he is the son of the shipyard worker.
So it illustrates the point that some canons of the storytelling actually cross borders, whereas others do not. That is, although I still had no idea where the story was going, there was still something about that half-hour mark that an essential character needed to reappear.
There is so much about this movie---I could write several essays. One of the techniques of writer/director Abdel Kechiche that really stuck out was the use of long, drawn-out scenes inside the cramped apartments of the characters, using many close-ups and extreme close-ups.
I thought I had gotten use to this pacing, but then a scene arrived that really seemed to stick out even more than the others, in which Slimane is in his apartment talking to Rym (Hafsia Herzi), the young daughter of the woman with whom he is having an affair, and who owns the hotel in which he lives.
There was something about the way the camera lingered on Rym's face that felt strangely erotic, even though on the surface there was little different about the style. Her jangling earring seemed almost hypnotic and dripping with sexuality.
Rym, who considered Slimane to be like a father to her, is complaining to Slimane about Slimane's sons, that they are ungrateful because they think that he should return to North Africa. "They think that France is just a bordelle," she cries out, using a term that means both brothel and "mess" (the subtitles chose the former meaning).
Next to her the stoic Slimane seems impassive and fixed. Smoke from his cigarette curls around him in arabasque swirls in the sunlight. At the time of this scene, I made a mental note to write about how awesome it was.
And here's the thing about this movie that makes it so incredibly good---it turns out that everything I just said about this scene---the hypnotic earring, the smoke, the conversation, the words she uses---turn out to have a huge significance later in the story. This is what masterpieces are made of.
One of the differences between French and American movies in terms of pacing is that French movies often do not present the essential struggle of the character until the beginning of Act Three, whereas American films almost must present them by the beginning of Act Two. This movie was an example. It wasn't until an hour and half that we learn of Slimane's plan to convert an old rusting boat into a restaurant.
He is not a restauranteur. It seems like a quixotic mission. But his family will help him. Even his ex-wife will cook her famous couscous for the grand opening, when he will invite all his friends, and the bankers and town officials as well, in order to get the necessary finances and permit approvals.
For a movie that starts out so languidly, it more than makes up for it in the last half an hour, during the fateful dinner aboard the boat. It is at this time that the importance of opening sex scene (involving Slimane's son) suddenly comes thundering down like the judgment of the gods.
I've never seen a non-action film that builds its tension more steeply than this one does towards the end. I could barely sit in my seat. In fact, I didn't, having to get up and pace around, which was OK, since I was the only one there.
The theme of the story, as I could tell, was the generational disconnect between the older North African immigrants and there children, who are more westernized. This is hardly stated overtly in the movie, but it emerges when one examines the cause-and-effect relationships in the story.
Specifically, the end result, in the very last scene, is the consequence of many small actions of the characters along the way (as it should be). Perhaps the most fateful one is the refusal by one of Slimane's daughters to fulfill the custom of taking a plate of couscous to a poor person in the streets. This refusal will turn out to have enormous repercussions, as it should.
Slimane's children will let him down, but one character will step up, and attempt to save the day. It's exactly who you expect. But will it work? Like I said, I couldn't keep in my seats.
A masterpiece indeed, and a perfect break from so many Hollywood movies lately.
As I walked out into the night out, the dark sky was still perfect and peaceful. The air was warm.
It occurred to me right then and there that it was time to go back to France.
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