Red-125 The Belgian film "Le silence de Lorna" was shown with the title "Lorna's Silence" (2008) in the U.S. The movie is co-written and co-directed by the brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.The protagonist, Lorna, who is from Albania, has made a pact with the devil. It involves her marriage of convenience to a Belgian citizen, so that she can become a Belgian citizen. Once she becomes a citizen, the plan is to remove her husband. Then, in another marriage of convenience, Lorna, as a widow, can marry a Russian who in turn will become a Belgian citizen. Lorna wants to become a citizen so that she can obtain a loan to open a snack shop in Belgium. She wants the cash for startup money.The plot is crafted by a Belgian cabdriver, who has no compunction about doing whatever it takes to move up in the gangster world. If Lorna's husband, a drug addict, has to be eliminated, that's not a problem. So, everyone has dreams--of cash, of a snack shop, of citizenship, of underworld advancement.The problem is that the drug addict, Claudy, is obviously in love with Lorna, and he's desperately trying to stay clean. Lorna has sympathy for this needy, suffering young man, and she'd like to adjust the pact with the devil to somehow spare him. However, what she learns is that the devil doesn't like people who want to change the pact. Arta Dobroshi, as Lorna is, indeed, from the Balkans. (So, it's not a stretch for French speakers to accept her authentic accent.) Ms. Dobroshi is a superb actor, and gives a brilliant performance as a woman who is basically decent, but finds herself in a less-than-decent situation.Jérémie Renier is excellent as her husband, Claudy. My wife and I admired his work before in another Dardenne brothers film--"La Promesse." It's really easy for Claudy to slip back into addiction, and it's really hard to stay clean, but he can do it if Lorna helps him.The Dardenne brothers specialize in films where bad things happen, often to good people. The curator who introduced the film said that the Dardenes specialize in films that offer no hope, but I don't fully agree. They specialize in hard films where tragedy is never far away, but the films do hold out hope for redemption. This is not always enough, but it's better than nothing.We saw the film on the large screen at the excellent Dryden Theatre in George Eastman House in Rochester. However, it should work well on DVD.

treywillwest Involving, powerful story with great acting and one profoundly erotic sequence. I think the Dardennes are so in love with Bresson that they are trying to emulate his creative arc. "La Promesse" and "L'Enfent" were a reflection of early "naturalistic" Bresson- a la "Diary of a Country Priest". With this, I would say, the Dardennes move into mid-period Bresson territory: think "Mouchette" or "Balthasar". I liked the Dardennes' earlier films a lot. But they were perhaps a bit too restrained. Hardly this one. Two thirds into the film this previously humane, contemplative work goes all subjective and crazy. Powerful, but only semi-coherent.

Ilpo Hirvonen Le silence de Lorna (Lorna's Silence) is the latest film by the great Dardenne brothers. They are modernizing cinema of today philosophically as they are narratively. Compared to another film by the brothers Le fils (2002) Le silence de Lorna is not as experimental, but at least as good, if not better. It's their first portrait of an adult woman and they succeed incredibly well as always. The film deals with the European identity of today, inhumanity in human trafficking, and puts us in front of a social question: how can humanity or any sort of morality remain in this cruel world we live in?Lorna (Arta Dobroshi) is in her thirties living in Belgium and dreaming of a better life. She lives in an arranged marriage with a junkie, Claudy (Jérémie Renier). The man who runs the arranged marriage business, Fabio (Fabrizio Rongione) is planning to kill Claudy in hope of a better marriage deal. Fabio arranges men to marry Lorna for money so they can get a citizenship of Belgium. Le silence de Lorna deals with the subject of human trafficking; business where the price of human life isn't high. It all happens in front of our eyes but we aren't doing a thing. In the end it grows out to be a strong moral study and the influence Krzysztof Kieslowski has had on the brothers is obvious.The Dardenne brothers are well known for their minimalism which can also be seen in Lorna's Silence. It doesn't have much music in it and the dialog is marginal - a lot from little is the core of minimalism. Luc Dardenne has said that he always listens to Beethoven before starting to work and, in the end, when the credits come on we get to listen Beethoven. The brothers have said that the more you take material away the closer you get to humane experiences. Their films are filled with body language, gestures and close camera-work. The cinematography is unique and reinforces the position of a camera as an instrument for philosophy. They follow their characters closely and through that let us observe the situations they get into, the situations in which they are prisoners of. The camera let's you to get into the minds of the characters. The camera sees what the character sees, it doesn't know what happens outside of the character's world - so what has been cloaked from us?The leading themes of the story are humanity, detachment, guilt, inhumanity and the European identity of today. The subject is very current in the age we live in. As I earlier mentioned Le silence de Lorna brings up a question how humanity can survive in the world of human trafficking. All the people in the business are portrayed as inhumane and careless. Where the victim of the business (the junkie) is portrayed as innocent. The eternal battle between good and evil is just one of the references to religion. Even that the brothers are atheists they had a strong catholic upbringing which can clearly be seen in their work. God is dead in their world view but they often use Christian allegories to reconstruct new humane experiences.In the end where Fabio hears that Lorna is pregnant and won't have an abortion he wants to get rid off her. We see Lorna getting away with her baby, going into a detached house in the woods - the culmination of theme detachment. It is quite obvious that Lorna isn't really pregnant. The baby is just a symbol. It's a memory of the past; of Cloudy and how it was Lorna's fault that he got killed. The baby is actually the guilt she's carrying.A marvelous film about the loss of humanity. I just saw it in theaters today and it went straight to my top ten of the decade. This film is very energetic, the movement in it worked brilliantly and as the brothers have admitted; movement is much more important than the plot in their films. Le silence de Lorna is a thought-provoking experience about the world we live in, our concept of moral and the European identity.

jotix100 The Dardenne brothers, those impressive Belgian filmmakers, are at it again. This is a sort of a departure for them, although their keen insight about people of a certain status has been shown before, perhaps with better results. As it's their style, the film is devoid of music. Their camera has a way to offer the viewer an insight on the character he is seeing on the screen. Make no mistake, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne are at the top of their profession by presenting films that no one else would dare to show, and above all, they make the viewer get another take of life, the way they see it.That said, "Le silence de Lorna" takes us to meet people that are so completely different, yet, not because of that, they don't feel real, on the contrary. The situation at hand involves a young Albanian woman, Lorna, who has married Claudy, a Belgian drug addict in order to get the citizenship papers. It is obvious their arrangement was purely a monetary one. Lorna, who has an Albanian boyfriend, Sokol, hangs out with the wrong crowd in Liege. Her association with them will not end happily.Lorna's connection, the reptile Fabio and his underling Spirou pressure Lorna into marrying a Russian mafia bigwig so that he can get the Belgian passport. Lorna, like so many other immigrants, wants to save her money to open a small snack bar with Sokol. She is sidetracked by what Fabio wants her to do. In fact, Lorna is torn between trying to save Claudy, who faces a possible death, and get her dreams come true.The film owes a lot to Arta Dobroshi, a dark haired beauty who is at the center of the story. Jeremie Renier, who has done wonderful turns for the director-brothers is seen as drug addict, Claudy. Fabio Rongione appears as Fabio.We look forward to the brothers' next venture because their films always leaves the viewer richer knowing first hand about real people.