We get an eye full of the Eiffel in the first frame of OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN, Rebecca Zlotowski’s Zeitgeist on the zygote.
It’s a picture postcard Paris shot infused with joy. It’s somewhat of a misdirect.
Then we meet Rachel. She is being picked up by a charming man, they engage in cheerful chat, domestic banter. Another misdirect. He is not her boyfriend, but her ex.
Rachel, a forty year old teacher of secondary school French, exudes a joie de vivre, a certain je ne sais quoi. She loves her life: her family, her high school students, her friends, her ex, her guitar lessons. It is at her musical instruction that she falls head over G string with Ali.
When she falls in love with Ali, she becomes attached to Leila, his 4-year-old daughter. Leila is part and parcel of the relationship. She tucks her into bed, cares for her, loves her like her own. But, of course, she is not her own.
Leila still lives with her birth mother, Ali’s estranged spouse, played here without bitterness or pathos by Chiara Mastroianni.
Rachel is the antithesis of the step-mother trope, benevolent, nurturing, present. This is not only evident in her relationship with Leila, but in her rapport with her widowed dad, her sister, and the affinity she has with her students, especially one for whom she plays a significant part in his life choice.
Virginie Efira is simply radiant in the role of Rachel, the nulliparous brimming with maternal instinct, with beauty, passion and truth and all the forgotten things.
Rich in its tapestry of characters and situations, OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN is a sophisticated film for grown ups exploring and navigating the intersections of life, focusing on the frustrations that cause emotional fissures rather than a forced dramatic necessity of brutal betrayal, and the melancholy of missed opportunity coupled with the ecstasy of erotic desire.
