Our Children

Our Children begins, essentially, at the end—with a foreboding long-shot of four tiny coffins being loaded onto an airplane. A slow-burning, corrosive, tragic film from director Joachim Lafosse, the film quickly rewinds to tell a family-oriented love story, in which a young couple in love—Mounir (Tahar Rahim) and Murielle (Émilie Dequenne)—find themselves with a growing family and little money, so they end up living with Mounir's bourgeois doctor father (Niels Arestup), who initially comes off as a loving patriarch but gradually morphs into an arch, controlling aristocrat. Mounir, who feels increasingly indebted to his emotionally needy father, finds himself torn between what his wife wants and what his father wants. Mounir and Murielle's predicament is, of course, self-made: trying to raise four kids and work while living with Mounir's father seems to be an obvious recipe for disaster. But even when Murielle eventually experiences a total emotional breakdown in the face of her increasingly impossible domestic situation, viewers are not prepared for the sadness to come. A powerful, compelling drama, this is highly recommended. (M. Sandlin)