The Dardenne brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc, have returned to the Cannes competition where they have won golden opinions over the decades: two Palmes d’Or (for Rosetta in 1999 and The Child in 2005) and other prizes including best screenplay for Lorna’s Silence in 2008, the Grand Prix for The Kid With The Bike in 2011, and best direction for Young Ahmed in 2019. But for me the dynamism of their work has fallen off in recent years, and there are sometimes issues with basic plot naivety and plausibility, for all the obvious research that has gone into their screenplays. In this film, for example – and not for the first time – the Dardennes include a bizarrely perfunctory “cosh” scene in which someone has to be rendered briefly unconscious, and this is achieved by hitting them once or twice over the head with something heavy, a trope that I thought had gone out with 70s kids’ TV. The ending itself is a bit naïve in its execution, though not in what it implies about the ruthlessness of people who exploit vulnerable immigrants.
Having said all this, I still responded to the heartbeat of idealism, urgency and force of this movie: a plain parable of inequality and injustice among the marginalised and dispossessed in the heart of western Europe. Given that so much cinema seems to be the creation of irony and indifference, the Dardennes are film-makers who believe that cinema should mean something and intervene in the real world. I was struck by the similarity of the Dardennes with the work of screenwriter Paul Laverty for Ken Loach, although I think without the Laverty/Loach streak of humour.
