OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN - Mark Reviews Movies

Other People's Children, Music Box Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 20, 2023

When we meet Rachel (Virginie Efira), she knows who she is and what she wants from life. Then, she falls for a divorced man with spilt custody of his four-and-a-half-year-old daughter, and when Rachel meets the girl in Other People's Children, something—maybe some deep-seated psychological longing or some ancient biological urge or the recognition that she realizes how important that "half" part of the age is to a kid—clicks.

There's no turning back. Rachel wants to be a mother.

Does this mean she wants to become pregnant? That's no entirely the case, although she gradually warms up to the idea, even if she won't admit it allowed. Does that mean she wants to marry Ali (Roschdy Zem) and officially become a stepmother to his daughter Leila (Callie Ferreira-Goncalves)? That could also be the case or just be an alternative option, but Rachel knows for sure is that, as she comes to love Ali, she starts to love this little girl, too. It's the feeling that gets her thinking.

This is essentially the whole of the story of writer/director Rebecca Ziotowski's film, which charts the course of these relationships with bittersweet honesty. It's encouraging and lovely how quickly and solidly the connections between Rachel, Ali, and Leila become akin to a family, but the flip side to that, of course, is that they aren't one. Ziotowski acknowledges and examines that other idea, too, in ways that just as easy as how the affection between these people develops—and as quietly painful as the other part of the relationships is sweet.

Rachel is a teacher, who has spent her career shaping the lives and futures of countless students (A subplot involving a troubled and directionless young man, played by Victor Lefebvre, becomes quite vital). She starts dating Ali, learns that he is divorced and has a daughter, and encourages him to let her become a more significant part of his life by introducing her to the girl.

They hit it off together, but Leila is still a child who wants her mother—Ali's ex Alice (Chiara Mastroianni), whose depiction here is of a woman, like Rachel, trying to make the and do her best in a tough situation—and doesn't quite understand why this other woman spends so much time with her and her father. When the moments of rejection hurt as much as the bonding is rewarding, Rachel realizes and fears just how vulnerable she has become within this tenuous, nearly familial connection.

Nothing is easy here, and Ziotowski doesn't set out to make any point more significant than the difficult truth of this scenario. That means the drama of Other People's Children is limited (That becomes clear when the film attempts to dig deeper into the character by way of her own family and her job), but when the film is focused on the emotional back-and-forth of Rachel's place within this family, its insights are forthright and thorny.

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