PARIS | Mother-in-law characters are often misrepresented in movies. With his fifth feature film Other people’s childrenIn her film, French filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski wanted to shatter the stereotypes that often characterize these types of roles by directing a woman in her forties who becomes attached to her new spouse’s daughter.
Rachel (Virginie Efira), 40, has no children. She loves her life, the students in her class, her friends and her new spouse Ali (Roschdy Zem).
Since dating Ali, Rachel has been spending a lot of time with Ali’s daughter, Leila, who is 4 years old. At times, she treats her like her own daughter, but knows full well that the day her relationship with Ali ends, at some point she will have to cut ties with her.
With “The Children of Others” Rebecca Zlotowski (Belle Épine, Grand Central) wanted to deal with the position of mothers-in-law in restored families, a topic that she feels is too rarely addressed in cinema.
“When I looked at the movies I know of that have portrayals of these types of characters, I found that we see very few of them and that when we find them, they always play a secondary or tertiary role in the story,” regrets The 43-year-old filmmaker met in Paris last January as part of the Rendez-vous d’Unifrance.
“By entrusting such a role to an actress like Virginie [Efira], who has a radiant femininity and seems fulfilled at 45, has also allowed me to look at this type of character from a new perspective. We often feel great bitterness and resentment in the way these characters are portrayed on screen. The opposite is the case with the character played by Virginie in my film. She is a greedy woman who has an appetite who is happy and cheerful. We feel like it’s the beginning of something and not the end of something. »
Biological clock
With the portrait of a forty-year-old who has no children yet, Rebecca Zlotowski also wanted to address the thorny question of the biological clock that starts ticking when a woman crosses the threshold of forty.
“I didn’t want to talk about how society puts pressure on women to become mothers,” the filmmaker nuances.
“What interested me more was showing how intimate and personal that can get. I found it more compelling to understand why this woman had reached the very end of the line that biology sets for us to ask this question.
“Because it’s a situation that I’ve personally experienced and rebelled against as a woman. It is an injustice of biology that men can wait so many years before having a child and not having a wife. And that, when you get to the age that I am, is really a metaphysical abyss. Unless you have a child of a certain age, you must close this chapter forever. That’s something I’ve often questioned because it was a limitation of my power. And I’m someone who likes to be in control of my life. »
►Other people’s children hits theaters on Friday.