THE OTHER SON - QUEERGURU

18 year old Joseph was hoping to do his National Service in Israel’s Elite Force following in his Military Father’s footsteps. However during a routine medical a blip occurs when it is revealed that he is a different blood group than his parents. After the initial awkward accusations that maybe his mother had strayed, a doctor friend investigates further and uncovers the truth. When Joseph was born in a Hospital in Haifa in the middle of the Gulf War there was an air-raid so everyone was taken to shelters for safety, as too was Yacine born the very same day. Somehow the babies got switched and so it turns out that devout Jewish Joseph is in fact Palestinian, and Muslim medical student Yacine is the Jewish one after all.

Suddenly the peace in what had been two very happy, families, albeit totally different ones, was shattered. Everybody was in denial at first. The two fathers and an elder brother were fiercely angry and belligerent, but the two mothers were more concerned with the return of the son they gave birth too, but without giving up the son that have raised and still loved very much.

The mothers act as fence menders and instigate a visit to Tel Aviv so that Yacine can meet his biological parents and his younger sister. Their spacious comfortable home in a well-to-do suburb is a far cry from the almost poverty-stricken life that his parents eke out in the Occupied Territories. Here in Israel they have both money and freedom, and whilst this is attractive to young Yacine, it just feeds his father’s anger.

Whilst the adults are somewhat lost in their bewilderment, it is the two very well-adjusted and extremely likable young men who find their own way out of the confusion as they quietly try and resolve their identity crisis in their own way.

This totally charming movie written and directed by French filmmaker Lorraine Levy had all the potential of just ending up as a simpering over-sentimentalized weepie Lifetime movie, but it was so much more than that. The fact that these two sets of parents were of different races and religions and should have been sworn enemies made the story so much more powerful. It also made the path to finding a resolution that much more difficult and also remarkably painful at times. There is one heart-breaking scene when the two fathers know that they should make an effort with each other and so they agree to have a coffee together but they just sit there silently seething unable to speak.

Ms Levy cast her movie exceptionally well and all her actors, without exception, gave exemplary superb performances. Watching the anguish on the faces of the wonderful Emmanuelle Devos and Areen Omari as the mothers trying to connect with their sons was so very incredibly moving, and it was hard not to reach for the Kleenex. They lifted this story into something that had you sitting on the edge of your seats anxiously willing them all to find real happiness from this tragic mistake.

Mlle Levy’s provocative tale carries a simplistic moral message. With the entrenched hatred in this Region that seems completely unshakable, these two boys are pleasantly surprised they are not that different after all. If they, and their generation, can get along with each other so well, maybe there is hope for the future of these two nations. We can only live in hope.

★★★★★★★★