by James Mottram
For writer-director Rebecca Zlotowski, her new film Other People’s Children came out of a very personal place. “I was a stepmom, wanting to have children,” she explains, bluntly.
She realised that on screen, there were few – if any – films that contained such a character. “As a woman, and as a filmmaker and as a spectator, I could not find any representation of what I was living through, experiencing. And so, this was the unconscious starting point.”
Originally set to adapt a novel about male impotency, starring Roschdy Zem, Zlotowski began to refocus on the script for Other People’s Children. Zem stars as Ali, a divorcee and father to 5-year-old Leila. He’s in a new relationship with Rachel (Virginie Efira), a teacher in her late thirties desperate to have children of her own. How will that effect their relationship?
Efira, the 46-year-old Belgian-born actress who sprung to fame in Paul Verhoeven’s erotic lesbian nun saga Benedetta, was hooked straight away by the set-up.
“When I read the script, I immediately felt something very intimate,” she says. “I recognised myself, my own experiences. When you get to a certain age… I’ve been in the position of a good mother to a man that then left me, and I had to leave his kids as well. But besides that, there is a special relationship that a woman has, that has to do with a tendency to somehow wipe yourself out. A tendency to be by yourself and to feel a connection to a family whenever you meet one. It resonated in me immediately.”
Zlotowski, whose breakthrough came with 2013’s Grand Central, with Léa Seydoux and Tahar Rahim, feels that there is a great deal of “shame” around women who reach their middle years without having children. “It’s painful and shameful to be ageing and not having children and being told that this is the end of fertility. It is, I would say, more shameful and painful than for a guy not to get a hard-on. We can talk about that…” But women struggling to conceive? “I still think it’s taboo… it will never be openly debated and discussed.”
When it came to casting, Zlotowski already had her male lead, with Zem. “Roschdy was there at the beginning of the process, so after that I could not say ‘Hey, I’m thinking of someone else’. He would hate me!”
She particularly enjoyed the way that her cast subverted expectations. Zem, she argues, is “supposedly the incarnation of divinity” and “post-colonial fantasies – masculinity, strength, sexual [virility], etc.” Meanwhile his co-star “is supposedly this gorgeous, blonde, voluptuous, glamorous woman,” she adds. “But I felt that Roschdy was the most feminine person I’ve ever met. And Virginie is the most cerebral person I’ve ever met. She’s amazing.”
At risk of turning this article into a backslapping fest, Efira [above] was also a big fan of her director. “Rebecca didn’t make any mystery of what she was about to do. She’s someone that can put music on a set just to give you an idea of the pace and the rhythm. And she also gives you a visual indication of the way you have to move, hold your coat, or turn.”
To help Efira, Zlotowski screened Alan Parker’s 1982 film Shoot the Moon, with Diane Keaton as a mother-of-four abandoned by her husband.
“She’s someone that gives you very specific indications, but then lets you be completely free once you are on set,” the actress says. “And she uses fatigue and tiredness and the fact that you do many takes to keep little things that she might use later on.”
The director was also bold in casting her secondary roles, whether it’s Chiara Mastroianni as Ali’s ex-wife or her own father, the interpreter Michel Zlotowski, playing someone close to Zem’s character. Best of all, veteran documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman also features as Dr. Wiseman, the gynaecologist that Rachel visits.
Zlotowski [below] first met Wiseman – who is now 93 – in an elevator at the Excelsior Hotel on Venice’s Lido back in 2016, when her film Planetarium was being unveiled. “I was really impressed to meet him,” she says. “More than any filmmaker, Wiseman is a god to me. He’s a master to me.”
Oddly, their conversation centred on the sparkly shoes that she was wearing for a gala event. “He said, ‘Nice shoes.’ And I said, ‘Nice shoes to you!’ The shoes of Wiseman are super comfy. And he said, ‘Yeah, director shoes!’”
They became friends, enjoying dinner together from time to time in Paris, but Zlotowski was also aware that he occasionally acts. “I’ve been jealous of the other films he’s been playing in. I was like, ‘Why are you acting in other films and not mine?’” Initially, she didn’t consider Wiseman for the role. “Out of laziness, I pictured a woman, maybe in her sixties, connected with the sexual liberation, being nice to my character. And then I was like, ‘And what if it’s Wiseman?’ Not only for the name; also to bring some lightness in the film. I could tell that it’s going to be a comic scene with Wiseman and Virginie.”
Sometimes, the film’s humour came from behind-the-scenes, like the moment Rachel is glimpsed naked on the balcony. “It was minus 20 degrees,” recalls Efira. “I was freezing cold. And then it was not a locked set. We didn’t have much money. So, everyone could see me out there, out on the balcony! And at that point, I could use the actual prudishness that I feel in real life. I’m quite shy, and I’m not shy at all in filmmaking and then I trusted Rebecca. I know she was not going to use a lurid aspect of any sexual undertone – it was just a comic scene – but I use my own feeling of embarrassment!”
Intriguingly, the film must’ve had some effect on both Zlotowski and Efira. Announcing it via the front page of Télérama magazine, the actress recently fell pregnant with her second child – and the first with her partner, Canadian actor Niels Schneider. Zlotowski also gave birth after she started prepping the film. “I had an interview and the journalist said, ‘Hey, Hollywood ending – she has a child!’ But it’s not a good resolution, nor a bad resolution. It’s just a resolution that wasn’t expected for me. I did the film, thinking that it was that… it was a pain for me. And I wanted to make the film, for people like me. I really wanted to deliver a film that could touch the heart of me.”
Zlotowski is unsure whether getting pregnant changed anything with the film. “I just know that I could film it with the right distance because I was no longer part of the community of women with no children… but not already part of the community of people that had children. So, I was at an interesting in-between. That is super stimulating to direct. Even with your body… there’s something invisible, but still very, very overwhelming in your life. So, this was interesting. It made this film once-in-a-lifetime for me.”
Other People’s Children is in cinemas now