Lorna's Silence

The fraternal writing-directing team of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne continue their series of films focusing on Belgium's urban poor, told in gritty semi-documentary style. Their newest isn't the equal of Rosetta or L'Enfant, but it's still powerful, centering on Lorna (Arta Dobroshi), a young Albanian caught up in a marriage-for-sale immigration scheme. Her sham marriage to a pathetically needy junkie named Claudy (Jérémie Renier) will earn her citizenship; but her sleazy boss, Fabio (Fabrizio Rongione), plans for her husband to die of an overdose so that she can wed a wealthy Russian who wants a passport. The scheme troubles Lorna, who tries to secure a quick divorce instead, but her plans go awry. The Dardennes present this story in an allusive, fragmentary style, compelling viewers to work out the connections and read motives into the characters' actions in order to link them into a coherent whole. Yet the film doesn't go where one might expect—an abrupt shift takes the story in another direction and Lorna to an ethical crossroads—in this searing parable of the possibility of redemption. No one else working in film today treats the circumstances of society's marginalized members as realistically as the Dardennes, who here capture the harsh realty of the modern underclass while injecting a note of moral hopefulness into what might otherwise have been a bleak and heartless tale. Recommended. (F. Swietek)