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Joseph, a Jew, and Yassin, a Palestinian, face an unsettling discovery.

Revelation turns lives upside-down.

Michael Fox

Special to the Jewish News

T

he goal of most films about
Israelis and Palestinians,
encompassing narrative fea-
tures as well as documentaries, is to
combat the real-world demonization
and fear of the "enemy" by humanizing
the other side.
The captivating and heartfelt drama
The Other Son is a particularly unabashed
example, conveying its good intentions in
almost every shot. Made by French film-
makers and tailor-made for Western audi-
ences desperate for a sign that peaceful
coexistence is still possible, the film neces-
sarily evinces a degree of naivete.
The story is so emotionally involving,
however, that The Other Son successfully
transcends most intellectual objections.
Directed by Lorraine Levy (writer-
director of the French-Jewish female
coming-of-age saga The First Time I
Turned 20) from a screenplay she wrote
with Nathalie Saugeon based on an idea
by Noam Fitoussi, The Other Son insinu-
ates us into a comfortable Israeli family
whose son is about to join the army.
Joseph is an ordinary teenager who's
never questioned the privileges that
come with being the Ashkenazi son of an
army officer and a French-born doctor.
(The Gallic connection, embodied by the
sensitive veteran actress Emmanuelle
Devos as Joseph's mother Orith, feels a
little contrived but was likely necessi-
tated by the film's financing.)
A blood test reveals the shocking truth
that Joseph isn't, in fact, his parents'
child. A little digging reveals that he
was accidentally switched at birth with
another baby, who went home with an
Arab couple.
So Joseph is actually Palestinian, and
Yacine, who's lived his entire life in the
Israeli-occupied territories, is Jewish.
How's that for a mess?
It's not quite as terrible as it could be,
for Yacine's family is economically suc-
cessful, and he's been enjoying the fruits
of attending a university in Paris for the
last year or two. (His fluency in French
is both convenient and critical, for it
minimizes the gulf between Israelis and
Palestinians as well as encouraging us to
sense the connection when he and Orith

meet for the first time.)
But the revelation is nonetheless earth-
shaking and disorienting for both sets of
parents as well as for the two young men
whose identities may still be developing
but are well established in key ways.
The scenes where Yacine and Joseph
visit their birth parents are among the
best in the film, balancing tension with
awkward steps toward common ground.
Joseph's visit to the territories is more
fraught with uncertainty and danger,
however, than Yacine's journey past
checkpoints to suburban Tel Aviv.
One of the movie's strengths is its
commitment to grounding the drama
and progression of the plot in the fami-
lies, rather than through, say, tabloid
media coverage. While there's plenty
of sociopolitical commentary, the film-
makers recognize that the characters'
responses to this traumatic situation
command our attention.
Inevitably, the extroverted Yacine and
the reflective Joseph embark on a friend-
ship as part of their individual needs
to reformulate and come to terms with
their identities. Yacine's knack for selling
ice cream on the Tel Aviv beach provides
a few chuckles but also precipitates a
turn of events that pushes Joseph as far
out of his comfort zone as he's ever been.
And while Yacine discovers the appeal
of assimilation, his militant brother
begins to see him as a Jew, a Zionist and
a traitor.
Glossy rather than gritty, The Other
Son sidesteps some of the harder truths
of life in the territories. That said, it
does raise a number of worthy questions
about the questionable morality of a
two-tiered society.
And to its great credit, it does so with-
out losing sight of the human dimen-
sion. The Other Son won't change the
world — or even perhaps French atti-
tudes toward Israelis and Jews — but it
comforts us with the possibility that we
have the capacity to reason, to empa-
thize and to accept.

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October 25 • 2012

81