Lorna’s Silence (2008)
Lorna’s Silence(FR) Directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne; Luc Dardenne Written by Jean-Pierre Dardenne; Luc Dardenne Starring Arta Dobroshi; Jeremie Renier; Alban Ukaj; Anton Yakovlev; Fabrizio Rongione; Olivier Gourmet
There is something unyielding about the films made by the Dardennes (Luc and Jean-Pierre), the Belgian brothers who write and direct films that practically moan with authenticity. Their fidelity to life being lived as opposed to the stylization that colors much of the narrative film landscape, at times leaves audiences with the feeling they are watching life unfold before the camera.
In terms of the subject matter and setting, The Dardennes have located all of their four previous features in their home town of Dairang, and each of these stories have been about people living on the edge of society, those barely making ends meet. There are other directors who thrive in this gritty milieu - Brit Ken Loach is perhaps the best known (and this film harkens to his recent It’s a Free World in its focus on foreign labor), but newer directors like Irishman Lenny Abrahmson (Adam and Paul; Garage) and American Ramin Bahrani (Chop Chop; Man Push Cart; Goodbye Solo) are two of note who also create character studies about members of the underclass.
The Dardennes have been as faithful as anyone in terms of setting parameters and sticking to them. These “rules” are self-imposed, of course, in the same way that members of the French New Wave established certain aesthetic criteria before making particular films, blending genres and creating new ones in the process; or the way Dogma 95 members imposed upon themselves a finite list of limitations governing how they would shoot their films. And yet with The Dardennes, one feels (as one does with Loach) an intense commitment that extends beyond mere intellectual and/or artistic conceptualization or gamesmanship. Like Loach, The Dardennes got their start making documentaries about social issues effecting workers, and one feels the dedication they must have to a certain world view, telling stories that expose societal ills and put a human face on an oft marginalized and thus dehumanized class of people.
It is perhaps because of this strict adherence to a set of aesthetics developed amongst themselves that there has been some degree of negative audience and critical reaction to the slight shift in tone and structure demonstrated in Lorna’s Silence. While we still get intimate close-ups with extended scenes that, at times, reveal little more than simple everyday actions and/or moments of quiet introspection on the part of our protagonist; characters struggling around the poverty line who are endeavoring to improve the quality of their lives; the presentation of difficult moral dilemmas faced by these same protagonists; and a story (nearly) devoid of scored music, there is more plotting here, as well as a story that seems somehow more constructed, more written.
Perhaps to those purists and devotees of all things Dardenne, this shift represents some form of sacrilege that the brothers are committing upon the temple they have erected. However, it is the artists’ prerogative (and perhaps even responsibility) to change and evolve, and whatever results from taking chances on a piece by piece basis, these changes (one hopes anyway) will ultimately lead to discovering new avenues of expression that will continue to be reflected in some form in their later work.
Lornas Silence is set in Liege, an industrial city housing in its confines and among its population a cross-section of newer legal and illegal immigrants. One of these is Lorna (Arta Dobroshi), an ethic Albanian and dry cleaner worker. She and her boyfriend, itinerant laborer and fellow Albanian Sokol (Alban Ukay), dream of owning their own snack bar, but need money to make it a reality. The two have already partnered with Taxi/cafe owner/thug Fabio (Fabrizio Rongione) by having arranged a fake marriage between Lorna and drug addict Claudy Moreau (Dardenne favorite Jeremie Renier). As a result, Lorna has her EU/Begian citizenship now, but the next step is to divorce/get rid of Claudy in order to marry Russian Andrei (Anton Yakovlev) so that he too can gain his prized legal entry.
As Claudy attempts to get clean from heroin, Lorna’s conscience is under scrutiny as she becomes increasingly uncomfortable with her role in the scheme. The Dardennes also include some additional elements in the mix, which point to larger metaphysical/philosophical questions regarding morality and guilt, the kind of hazy abstraction mostly missing from their previous work. Still, the question of personal morality and one’s responsibility to behave in a righteous way as juxtaposed by the struggle to meet basic human needs is not much different from the challenges faced by previous Dardenne protagonists - in Rosetta, a young girl willing to do almost anything to get a job; a troubled young man in L’Enfant dealing with his unwanted child; a father in The Son, haunted by the past and trying to reconcile his conflicting emotions.
There is something different here - additional plotting, suspense arising from the possibility of several different potential outcomes, that contribute to a general feeling of the film being more “written” than simply unfolding before out eyes, but the slightly enhanced scope is but a veering from an ingrained course as opposed to a full turn in style, and perhaps to assuage the worries of a faithful audience Olivier Gourmet even arrives a police inspector, as if to prove that these are, in fact, the same guys. And yet, at the end of the film - WALLAH, there it is, some scored music shows up. It will be interesting to see what these talented auteurs do next. Could a technicolor musical be in the offing?