The film “The Other Son” (“Le fils d’autre”) explores an
obvious personalized opportunity to promote peace. What would happen if two boys, one Jewish and
one Arab, were accidentally switched at birth and raised by opposing families.
The film, directed by Loarraine Levy and written with
Nathalie Sauegeon based on an original treatment by Noam Fitoussi, makes this
turn out well, because both parents raise really fine sons that can actually
deal with the dilemma and become close to one another. There is, in fact, at one point, a hint that
the story could have gone further. They
both like women, but they might have become lovers. (This idea has been tried in the heterosexual
world, with the book “An Affair of Strangers”.) You can perhaps overlook the
cigarettes and maybe even a little weed.
The Jewish family, headed by an Israeli Army colonel (Pascal
Elbe), raises Joseph (Jules Sitruk), a baby-faced but rapidly maturing
youngster approaching his 18th birthday. He takes his physical for
Israel’s mandatory military service, and it is discovered that his blood type
could not possibly have been derived genetically from his parents. Soon, investigators discover that during a
scud raid (from Saddam Hussein) in January 1991, during the Persian Gulf War, he had accidentally
been mixed up with Yacine (Medhi Dehbi), who is being raised on the West Bank
in a family with some musical talents.
Joseph, while already dedicated to Judaism (there is a
conversation where a rabbi says that Judaism is a “state”, not just a faith),
wants to press on his talent to become a composer, singer and Groban-style pop
star. Yacine, on the other hand, has won
a scholarship to a university in Paris and will eventually study medicine.
Yacine may look a little more "mature" at first, but one is struck by how much the people in the area look pretty much alike. Why didn't the mothers notice the error at birth? Apparently they had seen the babies just once before they were evacuated and then switched.
When the boys meet, Yacine turns out to be the more
aggressive socially, helping Joseph sell ice cream (at least not Donald Trump’s
lemonade) on a crowded Tel Aviv beach.
When Joseph visits his Palestinian Arab parents on the West Bank (Ramallah), he plays a native guitar and sings ethnic music for them over dinner.
The film shows the checkpoint procedures, and has many
scenes along the wall that Israel has built against the West Bank. Filmed in full 2.35:1, it is scenically quite
compelling and gives a detailed look at everyday life on both sides of the
wall.
The boys both come to feel that they can be both Jewish and
Muslim (maybe even gay) simultaneously, and idea that sounds blasphemous. At a personal level, the whole struggle that
their elders have put them into seems senseless. Maybe an “accident” like this can end what
Jimmy Carter calls apartheid in the Holy Lands.
In fact, their experience makes them wonder about the
importance of “the group” (whether nation, religion, or biological family) that
they belong to, as opposed to themselves as individuals. (At one point Joseph recoils in horror at the idea of being expected, in the future, to become a suicide bomber.) Groups have to impose conformity to survive
as such. This film is indeed about the value of and vulnerability of individualism.
The official site from Cohen Media Group (a distributor
which prefers films about international issues) is
here.
Wikipedia attribution l
ink for West Bank map.
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