Set against a bustling, closely knit Franco-Arab community, the film stands as a necessary corrective to the less flattering depictions of émigre minorities and as a reminder that parts of the world are post-Islam just as surely as the West can be post-Christian.
Forget hijabs. The amiably shouty, domineering women who drive this drama along provide even more demotic entertainment than their counterparts in the equally chatty Caramel. The centre of the storm is almost anti-climactic by comparison. Slimane (Habib Boufares) is an unassuming 61 year-old shipyard worker consigned to the scrapheap by recession and modernisation. Separated from wife, Slimane lives in a harbour hotel with his mistress- proprietress, Latifa (Hatika Karaoui) and endearingly bossy step-daughter.
Feeling emasculated he sets about opening a restaurant on a docked boat, a venture that brings together friends and warring factions of the family alike. Shot in ‘real time’ and earthily performed by a mesmerising cast, you think you’re watching kitchen sink grammar put in the service of amusement, a sort of French-Tunisian Raining Stones or Secrets & Lies.
But it in the final reel it all goes a bit screwy, as the comedy of errors runs out of places to go. An inappropriate belly-dance – young teenage girl shakes and sweats as elderly musicians circle – seems to last for 17 hours. As for that bizarre sequence with a motorbike – answers on a postcard, please...