Our Children (2013)
Average Rating: 7.6/10
Reviews Counted: 41
Fresh: 38 | Rotten: 3
A wrenching, quietly violent psychodrama, Our Children has the courage to ask difficult questions, and the strength to leave the answers to the viewer.
Average Rating: 9.2/10
Critic Reviews: 9
Fresh: 9 | Rotten: 0
A wrenching, quietly violent psychodrama, Our Children has the courage to ask difficult questions, and the strength to leave the answers to the viewer.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.5/5
User Ratings: 1,361
Movie Info
Murielle (Emilie Dequenne) and Mounir (Tahar Rahim) love each other passionately. Ever since he was a boy, the young man has been living with Doctor Pinget (Niels Arestrup) who provides him with a comfortable life. When Mounir and Murielle decide to marry and have children, the couple's dependence on the doctor becomes excessive. Murielle finds herself caught up in an unhealthy emotional climate that insidiously leads the family towards a tragic outcome. (c) Distrib
Cast
-
Niels Arestrup
André Pinget -
Émilie Dequenne
Murielle -
Tahar Rahim
Mounir -
Baya Belal
Rachida -
Stéphane Bissot
Françoise -
Duncan Smith
Fatima -
Redouane Behache
Samir -
Yannick Renier
Radiologist -
Nathalie Boutefeu
Dr. De Clerck -
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All Critics (41) | Top Critics (9) | Fresh (38) | Rotten (3)
It's an interesting way to tell a story and a devastating journey, particularly since it's based on a real-life incident.
Top CriticThis is a taut psychological study, based on a true story, of the complexities of personal power relationships that begins with the kind of shattering revelation that would be the conclusion of most films.
There is no whodunit here -- the horror is plain in the opening shots -- and the how is presented with great restraint, but the why remains veiled and mysterious long after the film has ended.
Our Children was inspired by a real-life Belgian tragedy, but director Joachim LaFosse has built that news item into his own micro-portrait of coercion dipped in kindness.
At once beautifully realized and brutally uncompromising ...
Belgian director Joachim Lafosse paints an image of how domestic bliss turned untenable builds to a crime unforgivable in Our Children.
When the inevitable happens, Lafosse's restraint provokes dread - he's given us a real psychological understanding of the unthinkable.
Challengingly takes the anti-CNN approach to a horrific crime, as upsetting . . . in trying to make the unfathomable credible. . .the film is nuanced and thoughtful.
The audience is held in a vise of claustrophobia, and every room seems full of tiny, screaming children.
The title can refer to the children whose tragic death the film is based on but more subtly on the dependency of Mounir, a North African, on his adoptive father and that of the wife on Mounir.
Lafosse's of the material has the feel of a psychological crime scene investigation.
The film trades in a blank grimness that isn't emotionally involving as much as it is like watching some terrible accident you're helpless to prevent.
Our Children needs more heightened moments; its emphasis on quotidian frustration, while admirable (and probably accurate), just doesn't get across what ultimately made this woman snap.
In terms of both plot and style (a string of one-face-then-another handheld shots), Our Children stakes everything on performance.
Aware that a story of such grave human weight and consequence demands to be told exactingly if it is to be told at all, Lafosse's film succeeds most profoundly by refusing to phrase the inevitable question -- how could she? -- as a rhetorical one.
Expertly avoiding sensationalism, this potently acted drama reminds us of Jean Renoir's celebrated dictum, that everyone has their reasons.
This is film-making of a very high order.
Our Children isn't simply a story of a mother with post-natal depression. It's much more oblique, and, like any family, complicated than that.
A quietly violent film that will both assault and deeply move its audience.
Audience Reviews for Our Children
Super Reviewer
País:Bélgica
Realizador: Joachim Lafosse
Elenco: Niels Arestrup, Tahar Rahim, Émilie Dequenne
"À perdre la raison" (baseado numa história verídica) é um filme de autor, um daqueles filmes em que os longos silêncios e um olhar dizem mais do que qualquer diálogo. Com um ritmo lento e sinuoso, o filme vai gradualmente envolvendo o espectador na sua elaborada teia, apesar da sensação de que não acontece muita coisa na história. Uma história que, no entanto, esconde mais camadas do que pode parecer à primeira vista, onde os innuendos se sobrepõem às evidências. Lafosse retrata magistralmente, em duas cenas, a ambiguidade da relação entre Mounir (Tahar Rahim) e o seu pai adoptivo,o médico Andre Pinget (Niels Arestrup), levantando dúvidas no espectador sobre a sua verdadeira natureza; uma discussão acalorada entre Mounir e o irmão, ou um momento inofensivo entre pai e filho que apreciam uma relaxante sauna, são suficientes para mostrar a influência de André sobre Mounir e os laços que parecem ir para além do afecto paterno-filial. Além disso, o filme toca em temas interessantes, como o choque entre culturas ou os polémicos casamentos de conveniência - alguns dos personagens casam para que um dos cônjuges possa obter a nacionalidade e permanecer no país.
Logo no início do filme ficamos a saber que algo de terrível aconteceu com Murielle (Emilie Dequenne) e com a sua família. Para descobrir exactamente o quê, só temos de seguir sua vida, desde o momento em que o apaixonado Mounier a pede em casamento. Depois do nascimento do seu terceiro filho, o casal começa a lutar com a falta de espaço e de dinheiro, pelo que decidem mudar-se para a casa de André, e é então que os problemas começam. Após um arranque promissor, pelo meio a história sofre devido a quebras de ritmo, conseguindo recuperar na parte final. Há muitas maneiras de retratar o horror. Pode-se optar pela forma mais explícita, ou fazer o que fez Lafosse: permitir que o público imagine a cena sem com isso perder nenhum impacto dramático. A subtileza desta cena final gelou-me literalmente o sangue nas veias. Em suma, um bom filme, ao melhor estilo do cinema europeu.(16/20)
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Foreign Titles
- Vincent will meer (DE)
- Our Children (UK)
