Lorna’s Silence

Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne emerge once more from their lower depths. Describing one of their movies describes them all. Their characters are the victims of soggy street-cart food and social disintegration — no God, no family or community infrastructure, no moral compass. Here, it’s Lorna (Arta Dobroshi), an Albanian living with a Belgian junkie, Claudy (Jérémie Renier). Spouse or roommate? The details casually drop into place. They’re married only as a business arrangement: Claudy got his dope money; Lorna got Belgian citizenship, which she is scheduled to transmit through remarriage to another incoming immigrant, all arranged by phlegmatic, lowlife mobster Fabio (Fabrizio Rongione). This being a Dardenne film, the protagonist is stashing money to buy a modest dream of “normal life” — Lorna wants to open a snack shop with her boyfriend. This being a Dardenne film, Lorna is a self-preserving solipsist, blind to any harm she does in getting hers, which includes having passively agreed to Fabio’s plan: murder Claudy to expedite her divorce and her next quick-cash wedding. In a sense, the Dardennes make economic horror movies, starring the dregs of the working class. Claims for something higher don’t read; the Dardennes challenge their beleaguered subjects, not themselves and not their audience. When Lorna and her ilk confront the “moral conundrums” of bare-subsistence life, no alternative answer seems viable. This leaves the viewer (impatient, in this case) to wait for the constipated soul to arrive at inevitable relief.