The Other Son movie review & film summary (2012) | Roger Ebert
THE OTHER SON
| Roger EbertOctober 24, 2012 | 1Print Page
Two babies are born at about the same time in an Israeli hospital. One is Israeli. The other is Palestinian. They're evacuated during a missile attack, accidentally switched and raised by each other's families for the next 18 years.
That's the plot line. When the mistake is discovered, how do the families react? What disturbs them more: that their son has been raised as an enemy or that he has been raised in another religion? That's where "The Other Son" gets complicated.
The two fathers and the Palestinian's brother are primarily concerned that their birth son has been raised by the "other side." The mothers are more concerned about the return of the son they gave birth to. The way this difference plays out is all the more fascinating because the families on both sides are decent people.
Joseph (Jules Sitruk), the Palestinian by birth, has been raised by Orith and Alon Silberg (Emmanuelle Devos and Pascal Elbe). After he enlists in the Israeli Air Force, he takes a blood test that reveals the startling news that he cannot be the son of his parents. The way this information is carefully disclosed by a hospital spokesman speaks volumes: This is a rare nation in which your DNA determines your eligibility to serve in the military, and it's clear the hospital has a lot of explaining to do.
Yacine (Medhi Dehbi), the Israeli by birth, has been raised on the West Bank by Leila and Said Al Bezaaz (Areen Omari and Khalifa Natour). His family is far from wealthy, but he had the good fortune to be educated in Paris.
The film's co-writer and director, Lorraine Levy, is French, which helps explain this detail and several others: that Orith Silberg was born in France, and she and all the other characters, except for Said and Yacine's brother Bilal (Mahmood Shalabi), speak French. In a sense that helps bridge the gap.
A key to Joseph's character is that, although his father is in the Israeli military, and he himself intends to enlist, his actual dream is to become a singer-songwriter. It's also important that Yacine, after some years in France, sees his plans for the future are in Europe. Neither boy is obsessed by his racial and religious identity.
This is definitively not the case with Bilal, and one of the shocking early moments occurs when he turns on his brother of 18 years and rejects him as an enemy. This emotional jolt may have as much to do with long-smoldering jealousy about Yacine's Paris years than with his new identity; you see how tangled such things can become.
Orith invites Yacine to pay a visit. Then one day Joseph crosses to the West Bank and pays a call to Yacine. (The ease with which he can pass the Israeli border guards is ironic, since he is a born Palestinian.) Yacine's family is caught off-guard; Yacine not as much. They do what any Arab or Israeli family would do, which is to offer their visitor food and drink, and the resulting meal is a study in social awkwardness and buried emotions, particularly on the part of the father and brother. In a moment of inspiration, Joseph begins to sing a song, and it's a wonder how that melts through the frigid atmosphere.
The new reality starts to sink in. It probably helps that the two young men are now well-launched along their adult paths; I wonder how this story would play out if they were both still quite young.
What difference did the switch make, really? In superficial ways, the two boys aren't so different: they both "look" Jewish or Arab, take your choice. How do they now feel about themselves? Joseph quizzes his rabbi: "Am I still Jewish?" The rabbi tells him he was one of his best students, but his mother was not Jewish, and so, no, he isn't, but he can convert. What about Yacine? Is he now Jewish? Technically, yes.
In an altered situation, it is easy to imagine Joseph and Yacine fighting and even killing each other, each one mistaken by the other for the enemy. The significance of this parable is there to be seen.
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Parents Who Are Left Holding the Truth, Palestinian or Israeli
‘The Other Son,’ About the Palestinian-Israeli Divide
THE OTHER SON
Directed by Lorraine Lévy
Drama
PG-13
1h 45m
By A. O. SCOTTOCT. 25, 2012
Jules Sitruk, left, and Mehdi Dehbi in “The Other Son.” CreditCohen Media Group
“The Other Son,” a new film by Lorraine Lévy, shares its premise with “The Prince and the Pauper” and Shakespeare’s “Comedy of Errors,” though its mood is more melodramatic than humorous. The idea of infants switched at birth, each growing up as somebody else, is an old and potent one in literature. The possibility of such a mix-up happening in real life evokes both fascination and horror and raises stark, primal questions of identity. Is who you are determined by the genetic fingerprints of your biological inheritance or by the influence of your environment?
These issues arise with special intensity for Joseph (Jules Sitruk), Yassin (Mehdi Dehbi) and their families, who live on opposite sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide. Joseph is the dreamy, artistic son of a high-ranking Israeli officer (Pascal Elbé) and a French-born doctor (Emmanuelle Devos), emerging from a cozy, privileged adolescence and preparing for his own military service. A routine blood test shows that he cannot be his parents’ child, and further investigation reveals that their baby — Yassin, that is — has been reared by an Arab couple (Areen Omari and Khalifa Natour) on the West Bank.
Although the story Ms. Lévy has to tell takes some surprising turns, the lessons of “The Other Son” are not hard to guess. The film is propelled by a hopeful, good-hearted humanism, and it sets out to show that, in spite of political, religious and cultural divisions, people are people.
At the level of principle, no one can really argue with this, but beneath the gentle optimism of the movie is an undercurrent of despair. The chasm between ordinary, middle-class Israeli Jews and their Palestinian counterparts is so wide — or, more concretely, the wall is so high — that it takes an extreme, almost preposterous happenstance to bring the two sides together.
“Ishmael and Isaac,” says Yassin to Joseph, looking at their reflections in a mirror after the two have become friends. This is not the only reminder that the Middle East conflict is, in many ways, a family quarrel. The young men’s households are virtual mirror images of each other. Their fathers — the main who raised Yassin is a music-loving auto mechanic, trained as an engineer — are quiet, solitary men, neither one quite able to deal with the revelations about their sons. The mothers, in contrast, find ways to express their pain and confusion and also discover the capacity to love both of the children they now share.
The families have another bond, which is the French language. Joseph’s mother was born in France, as were her husband’s parents, and Yassin has been studying in Paris, where he plans to attend medical school. This is not merely a convenient coincidence. “The Other Son” is at its best when it is most like a French movie, which is to say more interested in the psychological lives and emotional interactions of its characters than in their political circumstances or symbolic significance.
Another way of putting this is to say that Ms. Lévy is rescued from her maudlin, preachy tendencies by the skill and sensitivity of the actors, who turn a wobbly parable of tolerance into a graceful and touching story of real people in a surreal situation.
“The Other Son” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Brief violence and teenage drug use.
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The Other Son
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The Other Son (original title: Le Fils de l'Autre) is a 2012 French drama film directed by Lorraine Lévy.
Plot[edit]
The film centers on Joseph Silberg (Jules Sitruk), who is about to turn 18 years old and serve in the Israeli Defense Forces. During routine tests, his family discovers his blood type is different from theirs. Through further testing, including DNA testing, the family discovers that Joseph is not their son.
An investigation is conducted by the hospital Joseph was born in. Due to a bombing attack that occurred on the night he was born, Joseph and another baby were taken to shelters for safety and switched by mistake. The hospital administrator contacts the family of the other baby, who happen to be Palestinian. Their baby, Yacine Al Bezaaz, was born on the same night.
The story develops reflecting the issues of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in which both fathers are reluctant to accept the situation while the mothers are more open to the possibility of becoming close with their biological children. As the boys become friends, their families have to re-evaluate their beliefs and "resistance to neighboring culture" (Xenophobia) prior to connecting with their true identity.[2][3]
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