Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director: Rebecca Zlotowski, Palace Films.
A deeply moving romantic drama follows a woman whose outlook on life is overturned when she starts a passionate relationship with a single father-of-one.
Award-winning writer/director Rebecca Zlotowski’s delivers a captivating quintessentially French movie.
Other People’s Children features a career-best performance by the capable Virginie Efira (Benedetta), who looks glowing as a 40-year-old Parisian high school teacher Rachel. She loves her life, being inspired by her work and is close to her friends, sister and widowed father. When she meets a man in her community guitar class – the charming and recently-separated Ali (Roschdy Zem, The Innocent) – Rachel begins not only a relationship with him, but also his four-year-old daughter, Leila.
Gradually, Rachel allows herself to be drawn into their world, helping Ali by collecting Leila after school and looking after her on the nights she stays with them; the three start to share holidays together. While Rachel’s yearning for a family of her own is only growing stronger, there can be no denying Leila already has a mother (Chiara Mastroianni).
Though stories of parenthood and conception are familiar in everyday life, they have seldom been so attentively depicted on screen. An official selection for the Venice, Toronto and Sundance Film Festivals, Other People’s Children revolves around questions of belonging, connection and emotional risk. It deeply explores not only one woman’s search for fulfillment, but also gets to the heart of what constitutes a rewarding and meaningful life.
The parameters of kindliness and compassion are evaluated. Writer/director Zlotowski (Planetarium, An Easy Girl) goes to great lengths to prudently deliberate Rachel’s moods throughout the film. Obvious references are through the body language of the characters, along with their on-screen chemistry with each other and close-ups of the subtle expressions on their faces.
- The Other People’s Children releasing in Australian cinemas on 6 July
