L'Enfant by the Dardenne Brothers

[Howard Schumann]

L'ENFANT (The Child)

Directed by Jean and Luc Dardenne (2005)

Unlike some contemporary films that depict unethical behavior as "cool" and without consequence, the films of Jean and Luc Dardenne display a moral center and consequences for people's actions. Their latest effort, L'Enfant (The Child), winner of the Palme D'Or at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, is a fully realized, powerful work of art that brings back Jérémie Renier, ten years after his impressive debut in La Promesse. Set in an industrial city in eastern Belgium, L'Enfant is shot with the unmistakable Dardenne trademarks: a shaky hand-held camera, natural sounds with no background music, a concern for the underclass that globalization left behind, and a gritty and realistic look and feel.

Bruno (Ranier) and his girlfriend Sonia (Deborah Francois) live on the margins. He is a low-level thief, panhandler, and slacker who refuses to work and can only support his girlfriend by illegal means. It is clear that he loves Sonia but only in a playful, childlike way, not in a manner that recognizes adult responsibility. He lives for the moment rather than in the moment, pursuing instant gratification without thinking of how his actions may affect others. When she comes home from the hospital after giving birth to a baby boy she names Jimmy, she finds that Bruno has sublet her apartment in order to buy a jazzy windbreaker with stripes. With no apartment to go home to, the two are forced to huddle together on a cold embankment.

While Sonia waits in a long line for her unemployment check, Bruno, acting on a tip from a fence, impulsively decides on his own to sell Jimmy to a criminally connected adoption agency without thinking about how Sonia will react. When he tells her almost matter-of-factly what he did, she collapses and is rushed to the hospital. Bruno, showing remorse, tries to rescind the deal and retrieve Jimmy but is in over his head with a ruthless gang that demands he pay them a small fortune to compensate for their losses. Bruno begs Sonia to take him back and forgive him but she refuses. The more he tries to put his life in order, the deeper it sinks into chaos and, in a daring chase sequence, his reckless actions endanger the life of Steve (Jérémie Seard), his fourteen-year-old artful dodger.

The Dardennes do not tell us how to feel about Bruno and we are left to sort out our own reactions. A movie is not a court of justice," says Jean-Pierre Dardenne. "We try to make it so that the viewer feels many things about Bruno. When you see him selling the child, you think, 'No, this can't be, this is impossible.' But then the more you see him, the more you realize he's not just a bastard. You are forced to try to understand the character." Like the Dardenne's earlier films, the power of L'Enfant is cumulative. As Bruno evolves and we become more aware of his vulnerability, our capacity for forgiveness is challenged and the film prompts us to grow along with the character. In an ending that is unique and painfully touching, L'Enfant achieves a rare authenticity.

GRADE: A

[oscar jubis]

Here's my contribution to the thread:
L'ENFANT
I recently came across Anthony Lane's New Yorker review which takes my sole issue with the film one step further. Lane states that Bruno is too "evil" and "charmless" to make him the film's protagonist. I won't call him evil, but I have difficulty accepting his tearful contrition, and the title's implication that Bruno's selling his flesh-and-blood is simply childish and immature.

[Howard Schumann]

Originally posted by oscar jubis
Here's my contribution to the thread:
L'ENFANT
I recently came across Anthony Lane's New Yorker review which takes my sole issue with the film one step further. Lane states that Bruno is too "evil" and "charmless" to make him the film's protagonist. I won't call him evil, but I have difficulty accepting his tearful contrition, and the title's implication that Bruno's selling his flesh-and-blood is simply childish and immature.

No, I strongly disagree that any human being is "evil". That word isn't even in my vocabulary. He definitely made some poor choices and what he did did not work, but I think he did a lot of growing up in the film. It is left up to the viewer to forgive him. I guess some can and others cannot.

[oscar jubis]

I'm also not about to call Bruno "evil" . No human being IS evil because being human implies a potential for transformation. But I'm convinced he is, by far, the least likable protagonist of the four Dardennes' films that have been distributed in North America. Like you state: "our capacity for forgiveness is challenged".

In my practice, I've had a client or two who have sexually abused their daughters. What helped me to empathize was to learn about their being victimized as children, in one way or another. After watching the film at a press screening, I wondered about the negative early experiences that shaped Bruno. But the film doesn't go there, so I'm left with a grown man who engages in vile behavior. I couldn't forgive Bruno, based on what the film tells us about him. I'm willing to admit that those viewers who are able to forgive him are better human beings than I am.

[Howard Schumann]

Originally posted by oscar jubis
I'm also not about to call Bruno "evil" . No human being IS evil because being human implies a potential for transformation. But I'm convinced he is, by far, the least likable protagonist of the four Dardennes' films that have been distributed in North America. Like you state: "our capacity for forgiveness is challenged".

In my practice, I've had a client or two who have sexually abused their daughters. What helped me to empathize was to learn about their being victimized as children, in one way or another. After watching the film at a press screening, I wondered about the negative early experiences that shaped Bruno. But the film doesn't go there, so I'm left with a grown man who engages in vile behavior. I couldn't forgive Bruno, based on what the film tells us about him. I'm willing to admit that those viewers who are able to forgive him are better human beings than I am.

Not better, just more willing.

[Chris Knipp]

My original NYFF thumbnail review of L'Enfant.

At the New York screening, there were some writers who also didn't find Bruno's contrition or redemption (or whatever it was -- his great flow of tears, anyway) convincing. I didn't really think about that, because the film is so emotionally powerful it leaves you kind of limp, and POV has been with Bruno all the time, so you are glad when he goes bellyup and is at least ripe for reform. To have an immediate verdict on Bruno ready as those writers did may be typical of writers, but to me is glib and false, reflects a skill at raid judgment that I do not envy or aspire to. You really have to let it all soak in, and there's no final decision.

When you get into debates about whether he's "evil" or things like that, you're doing what you are meant to do. The Dardennes surely want to shake up your principles and make you think and talk.

But let's not forget that this isn't a treatise but extraordinary filmmaking, combined with a depth of moral concern, and that's what makes the brothers celebrated in Europe, especially at Cannes. Their hyperkinetic style is at its peak here. It's what they've always done, but they've never had such a hyperkenetic hero as the more mature Jérémie Régnier and their chops are up to keeping the pace he sets. If there is anything this pace is telling us, it's that his actions are insufficiently considered.

This film worked for me technically and emotionally much better than Rosetta. I found that monotonous and repetitious, but of course the D's model Bresson has those qualities too sometimes, in spades. L'Enfant is exciting and has great momentum. But the first film by the brothers that I ever saw also had that quality--La Promesse. I didn't experience it so much as a film of social and moral concern, as of vivid action and youthful emotiona. Of course the boy Igor (paradoxically, the same actor who later was to play Bruno) is acting out of moral outrage at his father's behavior.

One reason why Anthony Lane disliked L'Enfant was obviously that he adored Rosetta. That happens sometimes. He gave his heart to the earlier film and couldn't find as much to give this time. He kept saying to himself, "This is good, but it's not as good as............." I agree with Lane that the baby's failure to cry or require changing are strange lacks, and that the sequences involving Steve (Jérémie Segard), "the schoolboy with the earring and the lupine smile," are among the film's best. I don't think the film strains belief too much--that always seems something hard to claim to me, since life is stranger than fiction anyway--but I think Lane withheld his belief from the first few frames.

It is not my job to condemn or to forgive anybody. I just watch movies.