Virginie Efira Callie FerreiraGoncalves and Roschdy Zem in Other Peoples Children.
Virginie Efira, Callie Ferreira-Goncalves, and Roschdy Zem in Other People’s Children.Photo: Courtesy Music Box Films

This New French Film Is a Love Letter to Childless Women

For a topic as ubiquitous in modern life as fertility, the theme is explored relatively rarely in cinema. A new French film that played recently at the Venice, Toronto, and Sundance film festivals aims to correct that.

Other People’s Children, the fifth feature from writer-director Rebecca Zlotowski, follows 40-something schoolteacher Rachel (a luminescent Virginie Efira) as she begins a relationship with Ali (a smoldering Roschdy Zem), who has an adorable young daughter from a previous marriage. As she grows closer to them both, the thought of becoming a mother begins to surface—even as her ob-gyn (revered documentarian Frederick Wiseman, in a delightful cameo) warns her it might be too late and Ali’s ex (Chiara Mastroianni) hovers on the sidelines. It’s a warm, nuanced film with charming humor that’s worlds away from the sad childless-old-maid trope; instead it’s a refreshingly thoughtful and full depiction of a sexy, empowered middle-aged woman as well as a meditation on legacies in general and how we impact the lives of those who come after us.

Zlotowski was able to conjure such a considered portrait because, well, she lived it. She was in her 40s, wanted children, had worked as a teacher, and was helping raise her partner’s children when she began the project—which actually started as an adaptation of a novel about male impotence. It evolved into a film about a woman’s inability to have children and the emotional tightrope of being a stepmother or a potential stepmother, both of which are seldom seen in film.

Also infrequently depicted in cinema: a woman who’s childless possibly by choice. Zlotowski explores the ambivalence that can arise near the end of a child-free woman’s fertility, creating a character who’s “not having children but not 100% in that decision. Because when you are decided on that choice, that’s perfect. But when your fertility ends, it’s not a choice anymore. I’ve never seen a film address this without it being a drag.” (One recent exception is 2021’s The Worst Person in the World; both films even end with the same wistful song).

Zlotowski—whose previous films include 2013’s Grand Central with Léa Seydoux and Tahar Rahim and 2016’s Planetarium, starring Natalie Portman and Lily-Rose Depp—chatted from her home in Paris about showing sexy middle-aged couples, directing a venerable director, and joining the extremely short list of filmmakers who have made movies while pregnant.

Vogue: There’s a lovely lightness and comedy in the film, although these experiences can be quite emotionally painful. 

Rebecca Zlotowski: There’s a certain radicality in the sweetness in the film. I was fighting against those narratives in which people yell at each other and desperately try to hurt each other. It’s so much more moving when we try to do good but we just hurt or get hurt.

Talk about casting Virginie Efira, a Belgian TV presenter turned comedic actor known on these shores mainly for Paul Verhoeven’s not-comedy Benedetta (2021).

I needed a woman in her 40s who could embody fulfillment. This character is fulfilled—sexually, intellectually, financially. There’s no lack of autonomy in this woman. But still there’s always a suspicion that there’s something wrong if you do not have a child. And that’s not fair. These were some of the archetypes and stereotypes I wanted to reshape.

And if you’re a woman in her 40s, she’s the one you want to look like! Virginie is not only one of the most interesting actresses in France—she’s the kind of woman who makes you believe that everything’s possible. You can have this body and face and sexuality. 

Photo: Courtesy of Music Box Films

She and Roschdy Zem are both so sexy in this, which seems almost groundbreaking at their age.

Those two actors had a special chemistry. He’s in his 50s, she’s in her 40s, and we can tell that their bodies know exactly how to have pleasure and it’s not their first times. Usually Roschdy Zem would have been paired with a 30-year-old woman in a film. When a couple has a certain maturity, they become sexually appealing to each other and audiences can pick that up.

And both of them are shown nude, which is still uncommon in films.

I wanted to play with the nudity. She is naked in a kind of comedic scene, and he is shown very sensually, as the woman typically is.

There’s a variety of cultures and backgrounds shown in the film. Was it intentional to show a multicultural Paris?

Actually, I wanted to do more. It’s part of my life. I shot a TV series called Savages [in 2019] about the first Arab president of France—which is, of course, fiction—and with that I dug into the responsibility of the representations. But with this I wanted Roschdy in the movie, and he was attached from the beginning of the project because we were supposed to adapt a novel on male impotence. And not making it a topic—that he’s an Arab and she’s a Jew—can also be a political statement. And when you choose the extras, the characters that surround them, that’s always a statement.

Speaking of Rachel being Jewish—why was that important to show?

It wasn’t important, it was just easier for me. I’m a lazy bitch. [Chuckles.] It was so much easier for me to understand from inside the Jewish culture. The biggest challenge in the film was to chronicle one year in her life and have the sensation of a year, after which she’d maybe determine, “I won’t have children anymore.” As a Jewish girl, you have Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah in September, and it’s also when students go back to school, so it creates the perfect beginning of a year, a fresh start.

The film raises a question about transmission. It’s not about being a biological mother or not, nor a mom, a dad, a family. It’s about the trace we leave on the world. You will be remembered, even if you do not have children. And yeah, that is pretty Jewish.

There is a lovely and surprising cameo—how did Frederick Wiseman get involved?

He lives in Paris, and I knew he did cameos in other films, and I was pretty jealous. When I asked him, he was very enthusiastic and I had to rewrite the script, because it had been sort of a chamber piece with five parts. So I made him the freaking gynecologist. And I loved it—he brought all the comedy in those scenes.

What was it like to direct such a legend? 

He’s the sweetest person ever, and he really wanted to be the best in this role. It’s not his native language, but he speaks super-good French. He’s one of the biggest filmmakers since the origins of cinema. But I must admit he was scared to sit between Virginie’s widespread legs. Virginie was like, “That’s fine! Go ahead! Come, come!” But he would sit very far away from her with the endoscope.

Director Rebecca ZlotowskiPhoto: Courtesy of Music Box Films

You found out you were pregnant right before you began shooting. Did it change how you thought of the film then or now, as a mother?

When you have been a child-free woman for a long time—in my case, I got pregnant at 41—you hold onto the conception of yourself as a child-free woman forever. I feel very much in solidarity with child-free women.

I wrote the film with a certain frustration. In a way, I was trying to make the film while praying for it not to be my last chance [to have children]. I wanted the film to ward that off. Shooting it while pregnant created the perfect distance—I was not that character anymore, it wasn’t so autobiographical. My ending wasn’t the same. I don’t feel cinema should be a therapeutic object. It should be a generous thing you want to share, not just used to fix something in yourself.

Your film reminded me a bit of Mia Hansen-Løve’s recent film One Fine Morning in terms of showing the complexity of contemporary women’s lives with warmth and nuance and in a way that’s less plotted and more explorative. And both are French-women-directed films—is that a coincidence, or is it a movement?

It’s neither. I love Mia Hansen-Løve’s films. They’re moving and impressive. We’re lucky enough to be female filmmakers in France who can make our own movies even if they’re not commercial. Those kinds of narratives are usually rejected by a very commercial and male industry. In France we are lucky to have an industry that is welcoming to filmmakers, even if it’s still far from equity between men and women. These films show the ​​kind of trivial collective experiences that women know and that we’re able to bring to the screen as female filmmakers. And this became my biggest hit in France, so the world is changing a little bit. Maybe these aren’t only small films or women’s portraits anymore but also films that can bring us together.

Other People’s Children opens April 21 in New York and April 28 in Los Angeles, followed by select theaters nationwide.