Although we believe that the cinema has already talked about everything that can be talked about, always there are edges that surprise us, small twists and turns, details and moments as real as they are human to which he has not paid due attention. In ‘The children of the others’, the inaugural film of the Seville Festival, we approach the perspective of the rebound mother, the woman who feels authentic maternal love for her partner’s childher doubts, vital anxieties and the bitterness felt by the mother of a girl who already has one.
leave home
To talk of a subject that we all understand at first but that it is difficult for us to identify in a cinematographic way (in the end, these characters are always secondary or extras of the main adventure), Rebecca Zlotowski narrates with a steady hand but ends up veering too much towards melodramanarrowly avoiding (and often bordering on) becoming an afternoon movie.
And he gets it thanks to a fabulous interpretation of Virginie Effira, stoic, controlling her feelings and only showing them when she should. One of the best performances of the year, exuding love, nostalgia and sadness – simply fabulous. Her character, Rachel, experiences a double tragedy. On the one hand, the gynecologist informs her that she will not be able to be a mother even though she wants to. On the other hand, the daughter of her boyfriend does not seem to finish accepting her in the family. The problem with the movie is that to this frustrating maternal diptych she does not stop adding subplots.
A mother with cancer, her pregnant sister, visits to the grave, a student who sees possibilities, another teacher who likes her… In her love for the character and his desire to make him three-dimensional and close‘The children of others’ ends up telling us too much about him and over-extending a film that knows perfectly well that its greatest strength lies in the relationship between Rachel and little Leila. The rest is background noise.
The daughter tells the mother
The movie itself knows that is focusing so much on motherhood as the only way to enjoy life who feels that she must excuse herself when the time comes and put in the words of her protagonist the phrase “I don’t think a woman has to be a mother to be complete, I am proud to be part of the group that has no children”. A way of talking to the public and trying to apologize for a script that, within its contention, her pain and uneasiness for being a rebound mother take too much weightalmost to the point of becoming an obsession.
‘The children of others’ is right, and a lot, when it comes to showing the love that Rachel herself can’t help but feel: His relationship with Ali first and then Leila feels real at all times, an absolute beauty in which love and affection crosses the screen. That’s why, when the script cheats and in the movie they paint coarse without Rachel doing anything to prevent it or complain, feels so weird, so unnatural: In another movie we might have bought it, but definitely not in this one where the main character has shown that he doesn’t accept the imposed rules easily.
The false happiness that the film radiates during its middle section always has a wildly sad side: As fond as Rachel is of Ali’s daughter, and vice versa, she knows that she will always be “Rachel” and never “mom”. The film ensures that we understand it through different visits to the gynecologist that remind us that her chance of becoming a mother is getting smaller and smaller, an unnecessary countdown that seems to build tension and prop up the characterbut in reality it only comes to underline the central thesis of the film making it a bit repetitive.
The cool teacher
‘The children of others’ is, above all, pleasant, perhaps as a result of its own contention. No one cries their eyes out, or does crazy things for love, or kidnaps a girl when she doesn’t see any other possibilities: everything has a tint of realism that is sometimes uncinematic, but it’s the tone it needs. Rachel, like mixture of empowered and submissive woman in the face of her boyfriend’s impossible situationgets carried away by an Ali who ultimately makes the – sometimes wrong – decisions about her daughter, never getting out of the way.
Something that directly connects with her facet as a teacher, where she does dare to break the rules if she thinks it is beneficial. Jan sta plot, the movie focuses on one of the most worthless students, with Rachel trying to give him a future. Even though it serves as a consolation prize and epilogue in the end, this subplot doesn’t feel natural or add as much as the director believes about it. a character we know better for the intuited frustrations than for the dialogues he pronounces. Rachel is a fabulous character living a situation that the cinema has not told in a film that, sadly, is not remarkable.
At the end, ‘The children of others’ wastes a bit of your great base material and in his eagerness to make it believable, he ends up blurring a character who deserved more, but whose coldness (even in love) works against him. It is a good movie made with craftsmanship and love with a superb central characterbut whose improbable submission to the male character plays against the realism he wants to achieve.
Nevertheless, it’s worth giving it a try: the worst thing that can happen is that you also fall in love with Leila, one of the few children’s characters in the cinema treated as if she really is a child, with her drawings, her perrenques, her inopportune phrases, her judo classes… And his nightly requests to see mom and for that lady to leave home.