The Dardenne Brothers’ The Unknown Girl

Manhattan walk-up residents can all relate to Dr. Jenny Davin’s situation. We have all ignored late-night buzzer-ringings, assuming they are wrong numbers or random mischief. Tragically, when Dr. Davin ignores the doorbell at her practice after hours, the women who rung subsequently turns up dead. Consumed with guilt, the good doctor (which indeed she is), will try to uncover her identity in Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne’s The Unknown Girl (trailer here), opening this Friday in New York.

Dr. Davin was having a bad day. When her patient starting seizing, her intern Julien essentially froze. It was during their rather tense post-mortem of the incident that the bell mysteriously rang. She will greatly regret that moment of harshness for two reasons. According to closed circuit video footage, her mystery caller is also the same woman whose body was discovered at a work-site by the river. Regrettably, the absent Julien also informs Dr. Davin he is quitting medicine.

With the body due to be interned in a Potter’s field grave, Dr. Davin starts investigating the presumptive murder, hoping to put a name to the body. Yet, she still continues to see her patients, at least for the time being. Dr. Davin gave notice to Dr. Habran’s practice largely serving the Belgian equivalent of Medicare and Medicaid patients to join a tony practice catering Liege’s French and Walloon elites. Arguably, her guilt over the Jane Doe just amplifies the guilt she feels for leaving her regular patients, such as bratty young Bryan. During the course of her house call (which she remarkably still makes), she discovers the boy knows something about the deceased woman. Quickening pulses are quite the giveaway. However, Bryan’s father makes it clear he will not allow his son to get involved to any extent.

For some reason, Unknown Girl has been tagged as a rare dud from the lauded Dardenne Brothers, but it is a highly compelling, realistically muddled morality play. It is probably the closest they will get to a hardboiled noir, while staying true to their gritty, neo-neo-realist aesthetics. Granted, the resolution of the “mystery” is not exactly shocking, but in Liege’s immigrant quarter, they just don’t have the time or resources for the kind of complex cyanide poisonings that would require the attention of a Hercule Poirot (you know he was Belgian too).

The film also benefits from a remarkable lead performance from Adèle Haenel, who takes her craft to a higher level, following the inconsistent work in films like In the Name of My Daughter and Love at First Fight that first made her name. She vividly portrays Dr. Davin’s intelligence and conflicted ethical compass, both of which are always interesting to see portrayed on screen. Nearly the entire Dardenne company repertory players will turn up in small supporting roles, but the two who really make an impact are Jérémie Renier and Olivier Gourmet as Bryan’s father and the thuggish son of a possible suspect.

Granted, Unknown Girl might not pack the emotional gut punch of Two Days, One Night or The Kid with the Bike, but it would be plenty soul-trying for anyone to live through it in real life. In fact, they get at some acute truths of contemporary, stratified urban life. Recommended for all patrons of Francophone cinema, The Unknown Girl opens this Friday (9/8) in New York, at the IFC Center.

The Dardenne Brothers’ Two Days, One Night

So much for labor solidarity. The workers of Sondra’s local have voted to allow management to lay her off so they can keep their bonuses. It will be a devastating blow to her and her family, but that’s her problem, not theirs. However, she has been granted a second vote, due to the foreman’s improper attempt to influence the outcome. With the encouragement of her husband Manu and a supportive workmate, Sondra will fight for her job, practicing retail politics at its most personal in the Dardenne Brothers’ Two Days, One Night (trailer here), which opens this Wednesday in New York at the IFC Center.

Sondra was already grappling with the debilitating clinical depression that contributed to her extended sick leave. Obviously, this will not help. Unfortunately, her time away convinced management they could make do with one less person and the unseen, barely referenced union agreed. Reportedly, the foreman told her co-workers management was determined to lay off somebody regardless of the vote, so they might as well get their bonuses out of the deal. The truth of that contention is a bit murky.

Armed with this new information, Sondra tries to buck-up and lobby her colleagues to allow her to stay, despite the very real financial cost they would have to bear. Thus proceeds a series of incredibly awkward conversations. Some react with bitter resentment, while others overflow with guilt. Each becomes an intense one-on-one encounter, but they all essentially start the same way. Unfortunately, the Dardennes’ naturalist ethos precludes them from fast-forwarding through Sondra’s familiar expository intros, but at least they always go someplace uncomfortably honest. In fact, she even learns some of her co-workers are in an even worse position, due to their abusive home lives and dicey legal standings.

Two Days is being billed as the Dardenne Brothers’ first collaboration with a major movie star, which must be news to Cécile de France, who starred in the Dardennes’ The Kid with a Bike, as well as Eastwood’s Hereafter and scores of high profile French films. Regardless, it is easy to see why the New York Film Critics Circle named Marion Cotillard best actress for her work as Sondra. It is a raw, earthy performance that eschews superficial flash for a deeper, darker means of expression. Sometimes it is painful to watch her (of course that was true of the ludicrously twitchy Meryl Streep in Ossage County, but for the opposite, less edifying reason).

Clearly, this is Cotillard’s show, but Fabrizio Rongione’s turn as the more stable Manu also makes quite a quiet impact. In fact, the entire ensemble is remarkably assured and uncompromisingly convincing, despite their radically differing levels of professional experience (as per usual in the Dardennes’ films). Arguably, each confrontation between Sondra and a co-worker could stand alone as a self-contained film, given the strength of the supporting cast.

Although Belgium selected Two Days as their official Foreign Language Academy Award submission, it did not make the shortlist. There is always critical favorite that gets snubbed and ironically this year it is Two Days, a film driven by the process of vote-counting. Although it is a bit repetitive as a whole, the individual performances and in-the-moment flashes of truth more than carry the film. Recommended for those who appreciate social drama and Francophone cinema, Two Days, One Night opens Christmas Eve (12/24) at the IFC Center in New York.

The Dardenne Brothers’ Kid with a Bike

Cyril Catoul might be a hard kid to love but his father never really tried the nurture thing. However, a hairdresser might offer the sense of belonging he always lacked, unless he succumbs to the mean circumstances of his environment. Steeped in their familiar working class milieu, the Dardenne Brothers (Jean-Pierre and Luc) invite viewers to look at the world through the eyes of a child fast losing his innocence and wonder in The Kid with a Bike (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

When viewers first meet young Catoul, he is throwing a tantrum of sorts. It is hard to blame him though. Entrusted to an orphanage for what was supposed to be a short term basis, his father has apparently disappeared, leaving no forwarding information. In addition to the obvious abandonment issues, Catoul is quite upset over the apparent lose of his bike and the freedom of mobility it represents.

Inadvertently walking into the boy’s drama, Samantha buys back his bike from the neighbor his father sold it to. Almost as a dare, he invites her to become his weekend guardian, which she accepts in much the same spirit. Of course, the kid still has a lot of resentment and denial regarding his father, but he begins to trust Samantha. However, a local drug dealer also has his eye on the boy, left highly vulnerable to his overtures by his father’s excuses of dire poverty.

Bike is a tough film, but it is also highly compassionate. Despite depicting a tremendous amount of young Catoul’s lashing out, the Brothers Dardenne never condemn him. Viewers, like Samantha, keenly understand the cause of his rage. It is not a fairy tale world, but a typically naturalistic environment from the Dardennes. Nor is Samantha a fairy godmother, which makes her character rather heroic by everyday real world standards.

As Samantha, Cécile de France (recognizable to American audience for her turn in Eastwood’s Hereafter) brings a matter-of-fact earthiness to the film that really cements her relationship with her difficult but sympathetic ward. For his part, Thomas Doret’s performance as young Catoul is natural in a good way, convincingly projecting his anger, insecurity, and vulnerability.

The Dardenne Brothers do not let audiences off the hook easily. There is a severe internal logic to the film they scrupulous observe at all times. Yet, it stands as an unusually humane cinematic rendering of humanity, nonetheless. Highly accessible for general mass market audiences, Bike is strongly recommended when it opens this Friday (3/16) in New York at the IFC Center.

The Dardenne Brothers: Lorna’s Silence

Liège is a city with a rich cultural history, but the recently naturalized Lorna almost never leaves the industrial quarter. Still, she and her fellow Slavic immigrants will take drastic measures to stay in the Belgian city, the least of which being marriage, in Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s Lorna’s Silence (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York and Los Angeles.

Lorna’s Belgian citizenship papers are the result of a commercial transaction. She married Claudy, a Belgian drug addict whose habit makes him disposable. At least, that is what small-time gangster Fabio is counting on. After paying Claudy to marry Lorna, he intends to arrange a fatal overdose for the guileless junkie, so the newly legal Lorna can in turn marry a shady Russian for immigration purposes.

Initially, Lorna agreed to the scheme to raise the money to open a snack bar with her fiancé Sokol, feeling nothing but disgust for her husband of convenience. However, when Claudy tries to get straight, she begins to develop an unlikely affection for him. Suddenly, she finds herself scrambling to arrange a quickie divorce to save Claudy, allow her to marry to the Russian, and live happily ever after with Sokol. Of course, doing business with the underworld usually does not lead to neat storybook endings.

Though the Dardennes’s Cannes Award-winning screenplay has elements of a gritty crime story, it is a far cry from genre cinema. Instead, it is a stark character study of a woman who reaches her breaking point, and is eventually pushed beyond it. Like many others, she has resorted to commoditizing herself for financial reasons, reducing her humanity to a residency card and a marriage license.

In the challenging lead role, Arta Dobroshi withstands the mercilessly close examination of Alain Marcoen’s unvarnished cinematography. She dramatically conveys the churning fears and stirrings of conscience beneath her frigid façade. However, the standout performance comes from frequent Dardenne collaborator Jéremié Renier, expressing the pain, confusion, and basic humanity of the tragic Claudy.

The Dardennes offer viewers an intimate look into a grim, strife-filled world, where desperation and conscience vie for a woman’s soul. It presents a drab, inhospitable vision of Liège that would probably alarm the Belgian chamber of commerce, if not for the filmmakers’ prestigious international reputation as the country’s leading filmmakers. It is a darkly naturalistic film, but it has a definite moral center that is quite compelling. Recommended for discerning viewers, Silence opens tomorrow (7/31) in New York at the Cinema Village.