Left Field Cinema

Two film making brothers from Belgium, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, were until recently, viewed by many as the joint kings of European naturalism. Their latest offering released last year, The Silence of Lorna, received many attacks from critics because of an incredulous plot point in the later half of the film; this criticism was exacerbated by the reputation and the body of work that the brothers Dardenne had already built over the years as investigators of the human condition without the slightest concession to sensationalism or to the so-called movie logic. Their approach is far from unique and the likes of Mike Liegh, Ken Loach, Susanne Bier and many more have taken similar tact’s to film making and more importantly to film directing. But where the stories Bier has tackled for example have been primarily of a more heightened sensational nature, and often fall dangerously close to soap opera style incredibility, The Dardenne Brothers until now had refused to do so. This is not to imply that The Child is devoid of all sensationalism, it most certainly is not, the story itself follows events beyond most viewers’ experiences. The protagonist Bruno played by Jeremie Renier has a child with his girlfriend Sonia played by Deborah Francois, Bruno realises that he can get money for the child and so sells baby Jimmy to criminals without Sonia’s knowledge and most certainly without her consent, realising his mistake Bruno must get Jimmy back from the criminals and win back the affections of Sonia who has quite rightfully dropped him from her life. The story is very serious, involves criminals, kidnapping, police, and violence, but it is also a very simple story which although exploring areas of modern reality which the average audience member would have no or very little experience of; it still manages to portray them in as realistic a manner as possible within the medium of film. The narrative is played out in a simple manner, chronologically beginning with an almost innocuous shot of Sonia returning to her flat after leaving hospital with her new child and ending with a similarly innocuous although rather more poignant shot which I can not reveal without spoiling the climax of the film. There are no framing devices, the timeline is linear and takes place over a short period of time, we stay with Bruno and Sonia throughout the entire film and never digress to other characters or subplots. There is a purity in this sort of storytelling which is lost in the increasingly plurality of cinema where film makers and producers are increasingly tempted or forced to increase the complexities of their films in terms of characters, story and narrative. This is of course not to imply that such films are always inferior creations, only that the simplicity the Dardenne’s flaunt so regularly is a rare attribute that few audiences recognise. The way The Brothers Dardenne present the film is also simplistic, there is no non-digetic sound throughout the film, there is no flashy editing but likewise they don’t prolong their shots to potentially infuriating lengths like other auteur of world cinema, scenes are a reasonable length of time and usually composed of three or four shots. Their camera work is also deceptively simple; a mixture of hand held and more stable photography, the camera only shakes when the camera man’s position naturally shakes rather than the of-so-fashionable not-so-steadycam work of modern action movies like Quantum of Solace for example.

So with a simple story, simple narrative, and simple presentation, The Brothers Dardenne are free to concentrate solely on characters and performance. The Child is most assuredly a character piece, and the character who is most in question is Bruno, although Sonia is also very important and equally well written this is Bruno’s story, it is he who we follow and it is he who needs to change the most as a human being. Renier plays Bruno exceptionally well and with his powerful performance in last years film Private Property he is now proving himself to be a very talented performer. Renier has a knack for playing infuriatingly attitudinal characters with a sustained and unguarded naturalism which guarantees that even though the characters may be obnoxious and even sickeningly amoral young men, you still invest in them and their eventual outcomes. Bruno doesn’t visit Sonia whilst she’s in hospital after giving birth, he sublets her flat to a couple Sonia isn’t familiar with so when she returns home she is greeted by strangers who lock her from the house and only ungraciously return her phone charger. Bruno is unemployed but effectively states that working is for fools, he is ungracious towards employment opportunities and prefers to make his way through this world by capitalising on crooked deals and petty theft. He doesn’t care for society, he doesn’t care for his new family, he only cares about himself and his only interest in those around him is what he can gain from them. Bruno is bad natured, but he himself is not “bad” in the sense which main stream fiction so often likes to apply to characters of Bruno’s amoral and immoral standing. Bruno is instead a human being, a deeply flawed human being but a human being none the less. At one point after selling baby Jimmy, Bruno is questioned by the police, Sonia has called them to arrest him, Bruno denies the accusation and without even thinking about it states that Sonia is just trying to send him to prison so she can sleep with other men. This is second nature to Bruno, he might not care that he’s had to tell such an awful lie, but he also doesn’t take any pleasure from it either. He is a nasty, selfish man, but Renier never plays him as such, he doesn’t villianise Bruno but likewise he doesn’t canonise him either. Bruno is just a young man, he’s not in embodiment of evil, he’s not a personification of negative social conditions - he’s just a person. Just as he is not heightened or cinematic, neither is his development, his character does change during the events of the film, he realises the dreadful mistake he’s made, he realises the pain he’s caused Sonia, he realises that he can not keep treating other people as means to ends. But at no point are we presented with a “Realisation” scene or even worse a “Realisation” monologue, The Brothers Darrdenne never make the change explicit, instead they make the change organic, organic in the way that real human beings change in the real world, without “dramatic” moments, without speeches or proclamations, without staring into middle distance with Hans Zimmer music blaring over the soundtrack and the sun setting in the distance. In short L’Enfant is not movie reality but rather reality itself. Bruno isn’t a movie character; he is a real human being.

The naturalistic approach to character extends to the rest of the film, the baby Jimmy for example is never seen crying, movie logic dictates that a baby in a movie must scream at some point so that the audience knows it’s really a baby. The Brothers Darrdenne never exploit this tradition and instead opt for a far subtler option, the reality is that not all baby’s scream and most of them don’t scream all of the time. Car headlights don’t make a sound when you turn them on, but in movies they do; computers don’t make noises when you switch a program or minimise a window, but in movies they do. It’s the movie sound design, the idea that without these sounds the audience won’t recognise what is occurring; or that the sound design will feel barren. Personally an over cooked sound design drags me out of a film and I prefer the approach of The Brothers Darrdenne, it is an approach of restraint. The truth of their work is that it really doesn’t require a score, as film makers they don’t need to dictate emotion to the audience, they don’t need to tell us when to feel sad, we know when to feel sad because we’re watching events which create rather than dictate sadness. Likewise when to feel tense, we know when to feel tense because we’re watching events which create rather than dictate tension. When Bruno swaps baby Jimmy for the money, the scene is presented in a matter-of-fact fashion; Bruno carefully lays Jimmy on the ground in one room then steps into the next and waits for a call, once he receives the call he steps back into the first room to find Jimmy gone and in his place is the money. The scene is disturbing, shocking and upsetting in equal measure and it achieves this without any of the usual tricks of cinema, the film makers know that the scene by itself is enough to enthral us without adding any extra layers which risk alienating the audience’s emotion.

A possible complaint for the film is that it touches on controversial subjects like human trafficking and organised crime which the story doesn’t have time to expand upon therefore rendering them only surface deep within the narrative. But it is The Brothers Darrdenne’s concentration on Bruno and Sonia which pushes this film to masterpiece status. It is a morality tale at its core, an exploration of human awakening, of growing up, of taking responsibility for one’s actions no matter how foolish they may be and if the filmmakers had decided to explore the outer reaches of the films story further they would have doubtlessly compromised the purity of their film. The Brothers Darrdenne are anthropocenterists, their human adventures are pure in both design and execution, and if this is a direction they’re looking to change with their latest films, then it will be interesting to see their development and how their changing cinematic ideology impacts on their latest works.

M.Dawson