French filmmaker Rebecca Zlotowski was going to make a really totally different film to the award-winning Other People’s Children.
She had circled an adaptation of a novel a few man who may now not rise to the event and distracted himself with younger ladies. It would have been about friendships between women and men, and a deconstruction of masculinity.
“The thing I usually do with cinema is go out and have drinks and just mingle with people and talk,” Zlotowski mentioned. “And then the pandemic happened and I was stuck by myself in my apartment with my husband and my husband’s kids.”
Her personal scenario impressed the premise behind Other People’s Children, which stars Virginie Efira as Rachel, a 40-year-old lady who meets a person who has a four-year-old daughter. She quickly begins to actually develop into concerned in younger Leila’s life however with out the understanding that the connection would final.
“I felt that the story was literally the most romantic thing in my life — that I was falling in love with the kids of my boyfriend, and I knew that maybe some day I would have to say ‘bye’,” Zlotowski revealed.
The filmmaker, whose earlier movies embody Grand Central and Belle Epine, mentioned she had to decide on between hiding herself behind an adaptation or forging forward with a personally exposing story.
“Let’s do the woman’s portrait and see what happens! And the film was written like that.
“I’m always exposed to the world when I make a film. There’s a proverb my father mentions all the time, which is ‘the higher you climb, the more you expose your arse’. So when you make a film, when you’re deep-hearted like or the films I make, of course you expose yourself. It’s tough.
“My crew has known me for a long time. The same director of photography, the same producer, and they were reading the script and they were like, ‘OK, so she’s telling very personal stuff’.
“I’m a control freak and very cerebral and not easily sentimental but it was tough for me. And that’s the way it should be with this film.”
That Zlotowski described herself as “not sentimental” is an fascinating perception into Other People’s Children, as a result of the film is coursing with deep emotion. The character, Rachel, is grappling with a query that many ladies, and males, have requested as they approached their 40s – if I don’t have youngsters, will my life nonetheless have the identical that means?
Zlotowski’s movie explores the query by Rachel’s journey, and whether or not she will be able to settle for fulfilment of a life teeming with significance.
Zlotowski, born in France to folks from Israel, additionally seemed on the idea by the lens of her Jewish heritage. “I can connect with the fact that for a Jewish woman, when she doesn’t have children, you re-question the idea of transmitting things. How can you make the transmission an idea and not biology?
“In the film, someone says to her, I’ve not forgotten you, you won’t be forgotten. This is also like the Jewish thing, it’s about transmitting and not being forgotten.
“Maybe I was scared, as a woman. There are many women around me who do not have children, and it’s fine. This movie was about a woman who will never have a kid but won’t be forgotten either.
“You have a legacy. We have to choose the legacy and the way we transmit that legacy. Making a film is a legacy. Writing is a legacy.
“It’s something we need to struggle for because it’s like people don’t ask the question of their existence. You are born, you find someone, you get married and then you have children. What happens when it doesn’t happen like that?”
That’s the query Zlotowski and Other People’s Children is most serious about.
Other People’s Children is in cinemas from July 6 with advance screenings on June 30, July 1 and July 2
The author travelled to Paris as a visitor of Unifrance
Source: www.news.com.au
