Glasgow Film Festival 2023: ‘Other People’s Children’ Review
Stars: Virginie Efira, Roschdy Zem | Written and Directed by Rebecca Zlotowski
Immersed in her job as a teacher at a local middle school, Rachel (Virginie Efira) lives with her reality of being 40 years old with no children. At a group guitar lesson, she meets Ali (Roschdy Zem) and the pair strike up a romantic relationship. As Rachel becomes more involved with Ali and his four-year-old daughter, she confronts being seen as an “extra” in his life.
It’s amazing how easy it is for cinema to get experiences of womanhood completely wrong. Even after the long-hated stereotypes of housewives or the “dumb bimbo” who doesn’t know what to do with her life, the nuanced shades of grey often get overlooked. Adding any age over 40 into the mix seems to combust the shared brain of many creative teams, never quite grasping the fact that life doesn’t stop at a certain point. Rebecca Zlotowski’s Other People’s Children is a masterclass in tact, fear, and the yearning to love, dissecting questions of emotion and relationships that dig deeper than the standard, surface-level tick list.
For the majority of the film’s runtime, Rachel is walking a thin tightrope between two parallel existences. In the same breath, she’s the carefree, career-driven millennial who has an insurmountable wealth of freedom and the doting stepmother who hasn’t officially been deigned with the title. In a way, she’s considered two halves of a whole — but never quite rounded out if one of those sides takes hold. Exquisitely portrayed by Virginie Efira with all the tenderness between maternal love and emotional breakdown, Rachel is a rare example of something real. The fact that she’s never afraid to embrace both her emotions and responsibilities defines her by something other than the categories life would like to fold her into. Ali exists opposite her as a “nice guy” who’s still a whisker away from actually understanding, making an incredibly gauche U-turn in his life that centres his own needs over everything else. In a nutshell, it’s the story of life itself — only now it’s authentically being acted out.
Most of this merit comes down to Rebecca Zlotowski’s handle on her craft. Other People’s Children is an intersection of questions that don’t really have answers, yet seldom have even scratched the surface of entertaining. Its visual presence is extremely tactile, with key turning points introduced through the intimacies of sex of physical bonding, extending to Rachel’s hands-on relationship with four-year-old Leila. Combining raw pleasure with weighty decision-making makes viewers acutely aware of the painful social criteria still rearing its head in the 2020s, combined with the pressing need to act on what often needs time to work itself out.
Other People’s Children might just be the film many women have waited to see on screen. It doesn’t speak to the experience of all — and nor should it — but instead hones in on one we’ve been subconsciously consumed by yet never confronted.
***** 5/5
Other People’s Children screened as part of this year’s Glasgow Film Festival.
