The French title of “The Other Son,” “Le fils de l’autre,” translates literally as “the son of the other.” The original title better expresses director Lorraine Lévy’s intentions in this, her third feature. Set in Israel, the film takes as its subject two eighteen-year-old boys, one Israeli, one Palestinian, brought together by strange circumstances and forced to confront their differences. In an interview, Lévy describes film as “a way of experiencing and understanding the humanity of the Other.” This otherness, however, infects nearly all aspects of Lévy’s portrayal of Israeli society. The characters may reconcile their differences on an individual level, but deeper societal differences go unaddressed. The viewer can relate to the individual characters, but Israel itself remains wholly other, and this is the film’s chief failure.
The story relies on an unlikely premise: Joseph (Jules Sitruk) is set to begin his mandatory military service when a blood test reveals that he is not actually related to his parents. A mistake was made at the hospital when Joseph was born, in the midst of the Gulf War: Joseph, actually the son of a Palestinian couple, was given to Israeli couple Orith and Alon (Emmanuelle Devos and Pascal Elbé); their son, meanwhile, went to Joseph’s biological parents, Leila and Said (Ameen Omari and Khalifa Natour).
This contrivance need not derail the film, but in her exposition Lévy insists on a tone of deadly seriousness. Too much time is given to Orith and Alon’s hand-wringing over the blood test results. The truth finally comes out in the office of a hospital administrator. The scene is excruciating, and like many others in the film, it is a missed opportunity for levity. Both sets of parents sit expectantly, waiting for the doctor to deliver the news. The tension is ill-matched with so unrealistic a premise. After several beats of silence, you half-expect the doctor to throw up his hands and say, “Whoops!” Instead, he relates the facts in grave, apologetic tones, and the camera dutifully captures the aggrieved parents’ reactions.
Understandably, Joseph is distraught when he learns the news. The revelation has immediate practical consequences. He is exempted from military service, and, in a conversation with his rabbi, he learns that, although raised in the Jewish faith, he will now have to take steps to convert to Judaism. Joseph’s anguish impinges on what before was a comfortable, carefree existence. Hanging out with friends in Tel Aviv, he was unaffected by questions of Palestine. His own identity crisis forces him to confront the greater crisis in Israel.
Joseph’s counterpart, Yacine (Mehdi Dehbi), reacts more calmly at the news that he was in fact born to Israeli parents. There are a few reasons for Yacine’s even-keeled response. For one, the consequences are nearly all positive, practically speaking: Israeli birth confers benefits, not least of which is an Israeli passport that allows him to pass freely between the West Bank, where his family lives, and Israel. Also, unlike his father and brother, Yacine is shielded from the hardships Palestinians face. He has returned to live with his parents for the summer, but he was raised in France, and will be returning to attend university there.
The connection to France proves convenient. Orith, Joseph’s mother, was born in France, and French is spoken in their home. Sharing a common language, Yacine easily endears himself to his biological family. This coincidence is another of the film’s contrivances, but one that fits more comfortably within the historical context of Israel. In 1972, for example, only 8.4 percent of the country’s population was native-born, a figure that had risen to 76 percent by 2009, when the film is set. Yacine and Joseph’s generation would be among the first in Israel’s history to grow up in a country in which the majority of citizens are native-born.
There is little to suggest Lévy’s awareness of such particularities of Israeli society that pertain to her film. The Gulf War crisis that causes the hospital’s mistake is barely touched upon; presumably, any crisis in Israeli history could have served to set up the film’s premise. Such imprecision widens the distance between a non-Israeli audience and the film’s foreign setting. That most of the film’s dialogue is in French only worsens matters. In mainly highlighting the areas in which Israeli culture intersects with Western culture, Lévy fails to depict Israel as a place in its own right. Most of the film takes place in Tel Aviv and depicts a society more recognizably Western. Scenes filmed in the Palestinian family’s village in the West Bank, on the other hand, are suffused with otherness. In these scenes, dialogue in Arabic is only occasionally subtitled. As a French filmmaker working in Israel, Lévy seems more comfortable showing circumstances similar to her own.
Because its story is limited to that of its characters, “The Other Son” has little to say about the broader conflict in Israel. This would be less problematic if the film were content to tell the stories of Joseph and Yacine in a lighthearted manner—which Lévy, in some humorous scenes, seems capable of doing. Instead, a somber, preachy tone prevails. This tone suggests that a solution is forthcoming, but the film ultimately offers none. The actors’ portrayals are sympathetic across the board; no character seems capable of any wrongdoing whatsoever. Orith and Leila are models of motherly forbearance; the fathers’ masculine standoffishness quickly softens into gruff affection. As Yacine, Dehbi is constantly smiling. His features darken only when he dutifully remarks on the disparities, economic and otherwise, between Palestinians and Israelis. The cosmopolitan Yacine can pass relatively easily within Israeli society, however, and is thus shielded from these hardships. This remove makes his remarks more palatable for the viewer.
Only with Joseph’s story does the film achieve moderate success. Part Israeli, part Palestinian, he has no clear sense of his heritage. His feelings toward Judaism are mixed. At film’s end, Joseph is still struggling with his identity. The closing shot is of Joseph looking out over the desert, echoing an earlier shot of Yacine looking at the same landscape. Joseph is unsure of his place in the country that stretches out before him. Joseph’s turmoil is sympathetic, but with its inadequate portrait of Israel, “The Other Son” fails to get at the root of this turmoil. Still, the audience can relate to Joseph’s uncertainty about Israel—to us, it’s even more of a mystery.
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