No filmmakers have been more influential on the film festival circuit over the past decade than Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.
It’s gotten to the point where any subtitled feature featuring restless, handheld cinematography gets compared to the work of the Belgian brothers (and usually not favourably).
But Lorna’s Silence — which continued their run of awards at the Cannes Film Festival by taking a screenwriting prize — represents something of a stylistic departure: While it’s as intimate and compelling as the pair’s earlier films, it uses more distanced and static camera set-ups.
“We thought we had to observe Lorna,” explains Luc Dardenne in an interview conducted at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. “We wanted to watch her, rather than be within her.”
As played by newcomer Arta Dobroshi, Lorna may be the year’s most mesmerizing film character — a resourceful young woman from Albania bent on assimilation into Belgian society.
As the film opens, she’s struggling through an arranged marriage to junkie Claudy (Jeremie Reinier): The scam is meant to secure Lorna’s citizenship, but she undergoes a crisis of conscience when her handlers decide to save some cash by killing Claudy.
“A woman we knew had told us what happened to her brother,” explains Jean-Pierre. “Her brother was a junkie, and he had been offered an arranged marriage with a prostitute, with half the money up front and half paid on the divorce. We thought of this story, except we didn’t want to make a movie about a prostitute — just about someone who wants to find her place.”
Given this almost film noir-like set-up, it follows that Lorna’s Silence is the Dardennes’ twistiest and most tightly plotted feature to date — a true thriller. An even bigger change, however, is the shift in location from the industrial suburb of Seraing (the setting of their previous four films) to the larger municipality of Liege.
“Seraing is an industrial city,” says Jean-Pierre, “and by 6 or 7 p.m., the lights are out and everyone has gone home. Liege really comes alive at night, with a lot of lights, and that is the sort of atmosphere we needed. Lorna is an immigrant coming from Albania, and so she wants to come to a big city that has nightlife. And it’s also somewhere where she can hide herself and be anonymous. And mysterious: Lorna is a girl of the night.”
• Lorna’s Silence opens in Toronto next week.
