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As you may have guessed from the title, Lorraine Levy’s “The Other Son” follows a classic trope of “switched-at-birth” but with a cracking good, though portentous political update. Such narratives make us question nature versus nurture, and there’s plenty of that to go around in this drama. The story stumbles here and there, but there’s enough to recommend it.
We know something’s up when Joseph (Jules Sitruk) is turned down in his medical tests for the Israeli army when his blood type doesn’t match his parents, the army general Alon (Pascal Elbe) and his French wife Orith (Emmanuelle Devos). Turns out that being born during heavy shelling during the Gulf War has resulted in a mix up. Joseph is actually the son of a Palestinian family, Said (Khalifa Natour) and Leila (Areen Omari). This obviously comes as a shock to their son, Yacine (Mehdi Dehbi), who has just returned from medical school in Paris with his baccalaureate.