There's a briliantly disturbing clash at the centre of Our Children, but it's not the cultural one we're told to believe.
From the opening moments of this tragic film, you know there will be dead children by the end and director Joachim Lafosse creates a downward spiral so gradual, you can only watch what happens through your fingers as the inevitable event edges closer and closer. But he only tells us what that event is at the very end so we're in constant anticipation of calamity, which is emotionally exhausting.
He does distract us first though, with the beautiful Murielle (Emilie Dequenne) and her Moroccan fiance, Mounir, played by Tahar Rahim who comes with much kudos after his central role in A Prophet. But their characters in Our Children don't have as much room to develop and impress as that of Niels Arestrup who plays Dr Andre Pinget, Mounir's unofficial adoptive father.
With a quiet pleasure, he facilitates the lives of the young couple, giving Mounir a job, a home and graciously accepting their offer not just to live with them but join them on their honeymoon. They soon find themselves inescapably in his debt, not through interest or loans but an emotional duty to him. Pinget, we discover, is the man behind Mounir's presence in France. He is close with Mounir's mother and married to Mounir's sister in a “paper marriage” that has allowed her to leave her village in Morocco and become an academic. Mounir was allowed the same privileges that comes with being taken in by a rich French doctor, but in a barely there sideplot that struggles for the significanceit deserves, his brother was not.
As the years roll on and Murielle and Mounir go from being young and beautiful to being corporate in his case, and exhausted in hers. They have four children and their incredibly close life with Pinget is taking its toll on Murielle. She isn't convinced she's a good mother and with his matter of fact manner and a desperation to remain relevant to the family he has monopolised, Pinget takes advantage of that.
This depiction of domination and contemporary imperialism is horribly unsettling, as is the Moroccan family's anguish and not being given the opportunities that come with a connection like Pinget. But Our Children repeatedly tries to link Murielle's struggles to a culture clash between her French identity and Mounir's Moroccan one, it fails on this front. Neither Murielle or Mounri assert their culture enough for their to be a clash beyond the occasional rituals like their weddings. The more pressing clash is between Murielle's take on what she chooses to do with her priviledged position in the world and what Pinget chooses do with his.
Dequenne's performance is superb as her emotional strength wanes over the years and the pressure to be polite becomes too much. Tahar, is given a less challenging role but his scenes with Dequenne and his attempts at keeping everyone happy reveal overwhelming pressure and confusion. But it's Arestrup's performance that sends chills around the auditorium throughout this intense but flawed family drama.
Our Children is released in the UK on 10th May 2013
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