‘The Other Tom’ is a drama that follows Elena and her young son Tom. Covering the course of about a year, the film follows the working-class mother as she tries to cope with raising a child by herself.
As a single parent, Elena tries to manage working and raising a son, but she is troubled by Tom’s behavioural issues. After a medical evaluation the boy is diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder and Elena notices changes in the child’s behaviour after he starts taking the prescribed medication.
Following an accident where Tom falls out of a moving vehicle and is gravely injured, Elena decides to stop the medication. The mother is soon met by Child Protective Service workers as a school teacher has reported Elena for stopping Tom’s medication.
Elena consults with a lawyer, and not wanting for Tom to be taken from her, agrees to send her son to a camp for children with behavioural issues. Changing her mind as she drives away from the camp, Elena returns for Tom and the two cross the border into Mexico and visit with his father. The film concludes on the two spending the day at a water park.
‘The Other Tom’ is an intimate look into the relationship between a young child and their parent, made more difficult because Elena has to raise her son alone. The film highlights Elena’s disposition as that of someone who may not have intended to become a parent, or has been dispirited from doing her best as she has to raise her son by herself.
Complicating the situation, Tom is restless and has difficulties focusing at school, leading Elena to go by what the medical expert tells her and begin medicating her son. Shown here as a simple solution, the use of medication soon becomes an issue when Tom is ostracised for using it, and revealing that Elena has a short fuse, especially in relation to decisions abut raising her son.
After deciding to stop Tom’s medication, Elena is met by the public authorities and threatened with having Tom taken from her. The film goes above and beyond here in illustrating the paradox of how the use of medication is indirectly being enforced, with Elena’s concerns regarding the harmful side-effects being seen as irrelevant, ignoring her wish for Tom to be treated without medication, disallowing for alternatives to be explored. Enraging, the film provides a clear stance on how the public authorities and social system in place sidelines the well-being of individuals in favour of a blanket solution for everyone, inspiring an almost quiet call to arms to action a change in that regard.
After Elena returns for Tom at the camp, she decides to hide out with his father. There, Tom’s father is shown living an entirely separate life, seemingly uninterested in the boy’s development or unconcerned about how he should be raised, putting the burden solely on Elena, allowing us to see the root cause, or at least a large part, of where her anguish stems from.
‘The Other Tom’ explores the arduous situation that we find Elena and Tom in through minimal use of dialogue. Even though the delivery might seem strained at times, Julia Chavez, portraying Elena, conveys her struggle, illustrating that she does want to do her duties as a parent but at the same time exemplifying consternation and uncertainty as to what the best course of action may be. Often accompanied with a sense of quiet resentment, Chavez delivers the portrait of an aggravated individual, playing the hand she was dealt. Ultimately showing care for Tom, Chavez denotes the underlying care and love for her son, even though her outbursts of anger may at times mask that entirely.
The film unfolds slowly, with each new situation being introduced without prior notice, allowing the viewer to piece everything together based on the setting and character interaction, making the story develop in an intriguing manner, delivering a more engrossing experience. With more weight attached to the characters, the audience is invited to discover their motivations and nature purely through their actions, providing for an especially absorbing character study on Elena.
By exploring the use of medication on young children and focusing on someone in a low socio-economic position, ‘The Other Tom’ delivers a complicated exploration of drug use and ultimately its enforcement. By not providing a clear answer to whether or not the medication had caused Tom to purposefully throw himself from the car or whether it will have a long-lasting impact on the boy, the film allows us to reach a conclusion on our own, rather putting the emphasis on the emotion attached to the single parent struggling to reach the right conclusion on her own and being afraid of being judged for making the wrong decision.
Score: 4/4
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