L’autre focuses on one man in one place. Variety called the film ‘unpretentious, beautifully shot and emotionally powerful’. But to hang a film on one person alone is not exactly without pretention. These pretensions are however vindicated in L’autre.The story, based on the book by Andrée Chedid, is set in a small village on the coast of Greece. At the centre of the film is an old man who lives in the village. At the start of the film, he greets a your foreigner who is standing in front of his hotel enjoying the early morning. Before a real conversation can begin, the place is hit by a severe earthquake. The hotel seems to be wiped off the face of the earth. The old man is deeply shocked and misses the foreigner as if he were a good friend, despite the brief encounter. In the face of reason he believes that ‘the other’, the foreigner, is still alive under the rubble. The film shows his persistent attempts to free the foreigner from under the rubble and to convince the local authorities to help him in this apparently hopeless mission.The way in which he has visualised this simple, almost bare detail reveals that Giraudeau has great visual feeling. But the power of the film is also largely determined by the phenomenal acting of Francisco Rabal in the role of the old man. The soberness of L’autre provides plenty of space for his moving portrayal.
