The lowlifes and bottom-feeders in Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s
fine if taxing crime film Lorna’s Silence do not behave like
traditional movie characters. They are puzzling, frustrating,
inscrutable — and best handled as discrete collections of body
parts rather than as functioning, goal-oriented protagonists and
antagonists. Surface is all: A drug addict’s taut forearm muscles, a
hustler’s bald spot, and a mail-order bride’s flat chest register on
screen with a kind of limpid clarity seldom granted to the faces and
bodies of the starriest Hollywood stars. The shoulders, profiles, and
backs of heads in Lorna’s Silence are more weirdly expressive
than the perfectly lit, shallow-focus close-ups typical of major studio
filmmaking.
The Dardennes’ insistence on their characters’ corporeality is
necessary early on, because the people in the film remain stubbornly
opaque for the first hour. Consider Lorna, played by Arta Dobroshi.
Dobroshi may look like Ellen Page’s androgynous, beaten-down sister,
but she’s far less expressive and open — in fact, she’s so
skilled at draining her face of emotion that even after the story kicks
in, it’s never clear what forces send her through her day. Her husband
Claudy (Jérémie Renier) — whom she treats like an
unwelcome, irksome roommate — is, in spite of his shaking,
quavering requests, just as mysterious.
After some raw exchanges between this makeshift couple, we discover
that Lorna’s tense cohabitation with Claudy is just the first part of a
crude, crass scheme designed to exploit her new status as a European
citizen and potential mail-order bride. However, as the scheme
progresses Lorna — to her (and our) shock — discovers that
she cannot behave as mercilessly as her criminal co-conspirators; a
sudden, careless act of compassion simultaneously focuses her emergent
spiritual crisis and puts her in grave danger.
While not as forceful or exciting as 2005’s L’Enfant,
Lorna’s Silence reaffirms the Dardennes’ important status as
global filmmakers (with U.S. distribution — hooray!) whose art
addresses the damaging effects of unchecked market forces on human
compassion. Their conclusions are seldom comforting or easy to parse,
and the Dardennes’ fluid handheld camerawork reinforces their
characters’ trapped and desperate circumstances. (By the way, isn’t it
nice to see a filmmaker use a handheld camera to capture intimate
moments instead of using it as a tool to manufacture intensity?) But
flashes of hope and beauty crop up from time to time — the
vibrant yellows and blues of a phone booth, a bicycle ride through the
streets, a breathless account of a potential snack-bar space.
The problematic ending is equal parts urban legend and fairy-tale
wish fulfillment, but overall the strongest passages in the film
express a feeling of deferred religious grace comparable to the
uncompromising chronicles of despair found in Flannery O’Connor’s
crueler short stories.
