PREVIEW: Couscous at Brighton

So now's your chance with the hit docu-drama-style film Couscous being serving up at Brighton's Duke of York cinema.

While we make couscous in a matter of minutes, though, the film makes cooking the grain a slow burner, builiding up the characters over two and a half hours.

It's certainly not for those with a penchant for action movies but it's well worth the time, if you have the patience, to look at the sociological and political picture being revealed.

French media have compared it to the work of Ken Loach and it's not difficult to see why.

Director Abdellatif Kechiche apparently grew up on a council estate in Nice with his Tunisian family and the actors are mostly amateurs, although you would never know it.

Lead character Slimane is played by a man who once worked with his father on construction sites.

Slimane is a boat builder in the southern French port of Ste. As the film starts the 61 year old is told his hours are being cut and so his dream of running a couscous restaurant onboard a boat is born.

The plan divides Slimane's two families '“ his ex-wife and grown up children and their spouses; and his partner and her daughter.

While he enlists the help of his sons to work on the boat, his ex-wife and daughters to cook and his partner's beautiful daughter to help with the seemingly impossible task of getting permission from the authorities, his partner fears for her own hotel business.

Family situations are similar to those anywhere, some warm and some bleak, but the backdrop is of a different culture.

Included are some finely captured, intimate and memorable scenes, like a family Sunday dinner and a group of men gossiping about Slimane's plan, which are so real you feel like you're watching a documentary.

Couscous (15) is at the Duke of York from June 20 to 26. For show times and tickets, click here

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