With its restless energy, vivid performances and ability to touch on a wide range of social, racial and economic issues without losing steam, The Secret of the Grain seems remarkably fresh despite the familiarity of its core ingredients. The third feature by the Tunisian-born French filmmaker Abdellatif Kechiche, it combines a sprawling, meticulously observed family melodrama with the tension-filled story of a fledgling restaurateur encountering one calamity after another on a Big Night-like big night.

That Kechiche so skilfully avoids most of the clichés endemic to both kinds of tales makes it less surprising that The Secret of the Grain stole the Cesar for best film from the better-known likes of La Vie en Rose and Persepolis. In fact, Kechiche’s film is closer in spirit and form to Laurent Cantet’s Palme d’Or winner The Class, which also enlivens a conventional movie narrative (in Cantet’s case, the story of a committed teacher and his troubled students) with vérité-style immediacy and a keen awareness of changing social conditions.

The figure caught in flux here is Slimane (Habib Boufares), a deeply weathered 60-year-old shipyard worker who hopes to unite his disparate clan — and by extension, his community of Arab immigrants in a decaying French coastal town — by selling plates of fish couscous. The odds are against Slimane even before circumstances move far beyond his control. At a detail-packed two-and-a-half hours, the movie threatens to move beyond the director’s control, too. But The Secret of the Grain’s unruly nature adds a greater sense of verisimilitude to its portrait of ordinary people dreaming big (too big, as we’re not surprised to learn). The result is a work of great verve, intelligence and empathy.

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