"Our Children" deals with the subject of infanticide which doesn't make it the easiest film to watch though the bulk of the film is taken up with the fraught relationship between a young married couple and the husband's 'adopted' father, a doctor who has the taken the man, who is Moroccan, under his wing, treating him like a son. It's a relationship that finally drives the wife and mother to commit that most terrible of crimes. (I'm not giving anything away as the film opens on the aftermath of this act). It's a film that depends almost entirely on the interplay between the three main characters and in these roles Niels Arestrup, (the doctor), and Tahar Rahim and Emilie Dequenne, (the couple), are superb. (Dequenne won the Best Actress award at Cannes). In fact, so good are these players it makes the downward spiral into violence extremely uncomfortable viewing; those opening scenes preparing you for what's in store and yet the director, Jaochim Lafosse, always manages to keep us at a discreet and safe distance, at least until that point when things become too much for the young woman, (and us), to bear. There's a clinical detachment to the way things are viewed in this film that would be unheard of in a similarly themed American film, just as the strange relationship between the two male characters would not be touched on. Indeed, you could say this is the kind of film that only a European director might make; America take note.
"Our Children" deals with the subject of infanticide which doesn't make it the easiest film to watch though the bulk of the film is taken up with the fraught relationship between a young married couple and the husband's 'adopted' father, a doctor who has the taken the man, who is Moroccan, under his wing, treating him like a son. It's a relationship that finally drives the wife and mother to commit that most terrible of crimes. (I'm not giving anything away as the film opens on the aftermath of this act). It's a film that depends almost entirely on the interplay between the three main characters and in these roles Niels Arestrup, (the doctor), and Tahar Rahim and Emilie Dequenne, (the couple), are superb. (Dequenne won the Best Actress award at Cannes). In fact, so good are these players it makes the downward spiral into violence extremely uncomfortable viewing; those opening scenes preparing you for what's in store and yet the director, Jaochim Lafosse, always manages to keep us at a discreet and safe distance, at least until that point when things become too much for the young woman, (and us), to bear. There's a clinical detachment to the way things are viewed in this film that would be unheard of in a similarly themed American film, just as the strange relationship between the two male characters would not be touched on. Indeed, you could say this is the kind of film that only a European director might make; America take note.
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