Oth­er People’s Chil­dren – first-look review

In its own play­ful­ly iron­ic way, the title of French writer/​director Rebec­ca Zlotowski’s fifth fea­ture has the pow­er to strike fear into the heart. It sug­gests a hor­ror movie: the hor­ror of hav­ing to pre­tend to be the moth­er of a child who is not yours; the hor­ror of bio­log­i­cal changes to the body and the loss choice those changes bring; the hor­ror of liv­ing in the shad­ow of anoth­er woman; the hor­ror of real­is­ing that time is slip­ping away from you, and you can­not stop the clock.

It is not a hor­ror movie. Oth­er People’s Chil­dren in fact works as a com­pan­ion piece to anoth­er film from this year: Mia Hansen-Løve’s One Fine Morn­ing, which chron­i­cled the dashed roman­tic for­ays of a sin­gle moth­er played by Lea Seu­doux. Here, the sto­ry is less focused on the con­ver­sa­tion­al artic­u­la­tion of feel­ings and our flail­ing attempts to deci­pher the para­dox­i­cal com­pul­sions of the heart, and more on the desires we muf­fle in order to make these awk­ward, yet roman­ti­cal­ly reward­ing sit­u­a­tions work.

Vir­ginia Efera is Rachel, a loqua­cious and empa­thet­ic sec­ondary school teacher who falls for divorcee and par­ent-of-one, Ali (Roschdy Zem), while attend­ing her week­ly acoustic gui­tar jam. A ten­ta­tive courtship reveals his nerves and her com­fort, as she con­soles him while he cute­ly fum­bles drink orders at a café. Yet it’s not long before the pair are zoom­ing towards final base. After the rela­tion­ship has been pas­sion­ate­ly con­sumed, Rachel takes a solo tour of Ali’s apart­ment, and imme­di­ate­ly sees the rem­nants of his past rela­tion­ship – most promi­nent­ly, the bed­room of his cutie-pie four-year-old, Leila.

What makes Oth­er People’s Chil­dren both unique and effec­tive is that Rachel is the one who is valiant­ly attempt­ing to make the sit­u­a­tion work, as flex­i­ble in her inter­per­son­al out­look as she is while acro­bat­i­cal­ly mak­ing love to Ali. Zlotowski’s film is inter­est­ed in how we pri­ori­tise the needs of those we love, and Rachel knows that it would be both unbe­com­ing and poten­tial­ly destruc­tive to vie with Leila for a place in Ali’s heart. She is also some­one who wants chil­dren her­self, but, per the poet­ic mus­ings of her gynae­col­o­gist Dr. Wise­man (a rare dra­mat­ic per­for­mance by doc­u­men­tary mae­stro Fred­er­ick Wise­man), that moment may, unfor­tu­nate­ly, have passed. Could this be a handy solution?

Describ­ing this as a hor­ror movie is, of course, entire­ly face­tious, as it is in fact a very beau­ti­ful and con­trolled exam­i­na­tion of how a def­i­n­i­tion of par­ent­ing can exist beyond the strict bio­log­i­cal sense of giv­ing birth to and then rear­ing a child. Zlo­tows­ki shows that there are alter­na­tive paths to exer­cise at least some of the moral oblig­a­tions that come from being a par­ent, yet the film is essen­tial­ly a mut­ed but pride­ful cel­e­bra­tion of a moment when these con­ser­v­a­tive bound­aries are being shattered.

For its open­ing hour, the film is a mod­el of objec­tiv­i­ty in its refusal to pass judge­ment on the flighty whims of these char­ac­ters. Yet, by its close we see more of Ali’s flaws as a way to fore­ground Rachel as the hero, and this strat­e­gy does serve to take the edge off of its most tren­chant obser­va­tions about this sit­u­a­tion. A sub­plot, too, about a prob­lem stu­dent that Rachel takes under her wing smacks of Hol­ly­wood ​“inspi­ra­tional teacher” wish ful­fil­ment, even if it does tee up one of the film’s most naked­ly mov­ing sequences.

As a fol­low-up to her excep­tion­al – and sad­ly under­seen – An Easy Girl from 2019, Oth­er People’s Chil­dren could and should final­ly cement Zlotowski’s place in the top class of Euro­pean auteurs. The ease with which she nav­i­gates and presents this thorny mate­r­i­al – bol­stered no end by Efira’s won­der­ful­ly charis­mat­ic cen­tral per­for­mance – would sug­gest that she’s a tal­ent to be treasured.