Another depressing slice of realism courtesy of the brilliant Dardenne bros.

I feel as if I've been using the word 'heartbreaking' to describe too many films recently, so when I sat down to write this brief review, I promised myself I wouldn't use that word, even though this film is heartbreaking. Oops.

While not my favorite Dardennes film (that honor belongs to Rosetta), this is a an excellent, bleak portrait of babies having a baby. We see the young teenage couple struggling to survive the trials and tribulations that come with having a child, but it must be said they don't do a very good job at it. They are both deadbeat parents, of sorts, as becomes evident over the…

I couldn't help noticing that Bruno's cellphone ringtone is a foreshadowing of the unavoidably downwards spiral released as a brutal chain of consequences of crime leadership and baby trafficking in the streets of Belgium, and that the next time we heard it, we would hear it for a longer period of time than the previous one, perhaps signalling that wrong decisions were still being done.

In a faithless world devoid of Christ where people attempt to find resources with their own means and strength, the absorbing minimalism and relentless realism of the Dardenne brothers convey a sense of deep emotions, tension, love, romance, crime, danger and persecutions. It is, at its core, a moral wake-up-call tale for people to have…

Part of Lise and Jonnie’s What A Wonderful World: May 30 days, 30 countries.

I think I have a particular allergy to the Dardanne Brothers.

I dropped into this morning’s screening of the Palm D’Or winning L’Enfant oblivious to the fact that it was a Dardanne. I saw the critical darling Kid with a Bike a few years ago at TIFF and pretty much hated it.

As L’Enfant unfolded, I began to feel that same revulsion. I was well rested, not in a bad mood, just open to what was unfolding but I HATED the titular Enfant Terrible Bruno. Now, I’m sure wiser film lovers would say ‘that’s the point’. Well, not for me. The opening few scenes of his…

More than anything else, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's L'Enfant highlights the subtle difference between a moral movie and a moralizing one. The action of this film is predicated entirely upon the moral (or amoral) choices of its characters, but the filmmakers are so careful not to interject their own commentary or to make any larger statements about human nature that the result is something far more powerful and profound than condescendingly saying "X is good, Y is bad." The Dardennes simply point the camera at their story and say "this is what it is."

It tells the story of Bruno, a callous and immature petty thief who exists at the very bottom of Belgian society. We first see him through…

71/100

[Originally published by Las Vegas Weekly.]

Even if you were to watch L'Enfant (The Child) with the sound turned off and the subtitles removed, you'd quickly realize that there's no conceivable way it could have been made in America. It's not that the characters come across as stereotypically European—neither Bruno (Jérémie Renier), the young, towheaded petty thief at its center, nor Sonia (Déborah François), his moon- and whey-faced girlfriend, spends any time sipping espressos in sidewalk cafés, both of them being too preoccupied with moment-to-moment survival. Nor does the small, dingy factory town of Seraing, where Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (La Promesse, Rosetta, The Son) invariably shoot, look all that different from, say, the crummier sections of…

4.5/5.0 = Stellar

I could not look away for a God damn minute! What brilliant actors, what a brilliant story, what brilliant economy of storytelling, but - and perhaps most curiously - what a brilliant title! It's like the Dardennes scored a home run the moment they named their film, a relentless capture of immaturity; a film that never chastises its characters for their juvenile antics, but one that implores that they own up to their responsibilities. The perspective shifts are jaw-dropping. The no-thrills depiction of criminal activity is so refreshing (holy cow that baby drop off scene is monstrously good). The Dardennes are a force, and this is easily my favorite to date. Really fascinating to compare the likes…