Late Motherhood Gets the Spotlight in Rebecca Zlotowski’s ‘Other People’s Children’

variety.com:

Ben Croll Some films spring from abundance, while others are born of a need. Premiering in competition in Venice, Rebecca Zlotowski’s “Other People’s Children” clearly falls into the latter camp. “I’ve often used cinema as a guide for living, only aspects of my own life hadn’t been told,” Zlotowski tells Variety. “I imagined a 40-year-old woman, nearing the end of her fertility, who is a stepmother to others, and thought, why hadn’t we seen that character before?”     Filling in the missing pieces, Zlotowski’s romantic drama follows Rachel (Virginie Efira), a Parisian high school teacher who feels pangs of maternity when she falls in love with a recent divorcé – and with him, his four-year-old daughter.

Tinged in bittersweet tones, the film tracks the ecstasies of a new and all-enveloping love affair and the tradeoffs that arrive with mid-life relationships.

Because in this particular love-triangle – as common in the real world as it is rare on screen – there are certain bonds a new partner cannot join. “I wanted to explore those secondary figures in other narratives,” says Zlotowski. “I love that American term ‘the rebound,’ when you feel like an afterthought to someone you love.

It happens, and you need the humility to admit it. So by romanticizing and exalting those characters, I figured I could avenge them!” And after exploring questions of class and social rank in films like “Grand Central” and “An Easy Girl,” the director aimed at a more intimate register here. “It took me a long time to tell stories that sprang more from my body and less from my brain,” she says. “I wanted to be upfront, more candid than usual, without minding if people made the connection with my personal life.