Did anyone else think Yacine looked like he could have belonged in both families but Joseph didn't look like either set of parents? The actor was great, and his emotional sensitivity matched his birth family, but I was disturbed the whole time by his appearance.
shareagree, but only because he was so much darker. But they clearly went to great lengths to make the hereditary connections believable, even if not always obvious physically...
shareby - oolala53
"Did anyone else think Yacine looked like he could have belonged in both families but Joseph didn't look like either set of parents? The actor was great, and his emotional sensitivity matched his birth family, but I was disturbed the whole time by his appearance."
I had the same reaction. Yacine was believable as Elon's son, but Joseph was more suited to his accidental mother, Orith, than to any other relatives physically.
The actor playing Yacine is Arab going by his name.
The grandfather of the actor playing Joseph was the Chief Rabbi of France.
I thought that the young men played their parts well, but it was hard to visualize the "switched at birth" theme, since the actor playing Joseph looked Jewish and the actor playing Yacine didn't.
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The actor who played Joseph, the Palestinian misplaced in the Jewish family, is French actor Jules Sitruk, identified as Jewish in the Wiki article. He is pale and certainly does not look Arabic much less does he fit in with the Palestinian family. Mehdi Dehbi, Yacine, who is supposed to be Jewish, is a Belgian actor of Tunisian origin. He definitely looks Arabic, although he could pass for a Mizrahi or Sephardi of course. No way does he fit in with the Jewish family but he certainly resembles Bilal, who is supposed to really be the brother of Joseph but with whom Bilal has no common physical traits. When the three are together, someone who does not know the plot of the film would assume that Bilal and Yacine are brothers and that Joseph is a pale European Jew. I have no idea why the boys were cast in this disconcerting fashion. Both Sitruk and Dehbi were wonderful. I keep wondering how the film would have been had the roles been reversed. I loved the film but it was distracting to be so confused because of the miscast main actors.
shareI agree, and this miscasting jarred with me throughout what was otherwise a fascinating film. Jules should have played the Silberg son, and Medhi should have played the El Bazzour son.
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