There are loads of movies that begin at the end - The Usual Suspects, Sunset Boulevard, Fight Club, Carlito's Way and City of God being just a few. Our Children is the latest, opening with a woman in a hospital bed, pleading with a man to ‘bury them in Morocco.' We then see four child-size coffins loaded onto a plane. While for some it's the journey, not the arrival, knowing what happens in the end can rob us of a climax. Despite this Our Children still manages to be an engrossing drama, boasting one of the best performances of the year.
Mounir (Rahim) and Murielle (Dequenne) are in love - she's Belgian and he's Moroccan, the adopted son of rich doctor, Pinget (Arestrup, Rahim's co-star in A Prophet); why Pinget adopted Mounir and why he married Mounir's sister for visa purposes remains unclear - maybe he likes the utter devotion Mounir is only too happy to give him, a devotion so strong that Pinget will always come first, something Murielle realises all too late...
Based on a true story, the script, co-written by Thomas Bidegain (A Prophet, Rust & Bone), rushes through the lives of the three co-habitants as over the years Murielle and Rahim have four children, all under the watchful gaze of Pinget, who controls every aspect of their lives. He owns the house, he's Mounir's employer, he goes on their honeymoon. The couple want for nothing but it's a cold comfort and no better man that Arestrup to play that role.
As good as Arestrup is, once again playing the nasty, imposing father figure with understatement, he pales in comparison to Dequenne's turn as the oppressed Murielle. It's a subtle change but over the course of the film there's a real physical alteration here. She becomes gaunt, haunted, isolated. Little by little, Murielle's personality and identity are chipped away and she becomes a shell of the woman she once was. Every withering comment is another wound to her already depressed psyche until she just isn't there anymore.
Miserable but fantastic drama, there is an argument for knowing too much at the beginning, however. Maybe there's finally a case for arriving a minute late for a film.
