Holiday Weekend Movie Forecast: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Revolutionary Road

The Cesar-winning family drama The Secret of the Grain from French-Tunisian director Abdellatif Kechiche opens today. The film centers on Slimaine, an aging patriarch who wants to leave his shipyard job (one he's had for 35 years) and open a restaurant, featuring his ex-wife's coucous, and his dealings with friends and family. The Times' A.O. Scott calls the movie "bustling and brilliant": "The camera bobs and fidgets in crowded rooms full of noisy people, so that your senses are flooded with the warmth and stickiness of Slimane and Souad’s family circle. The scenes, though they feel improvised, at times almost accidentally recorded, have a syncopated authenticity for which the sturdy old word realism seems inadequate."