"Well, then you'll
see a Dardenne film again.
You know what to get.
Straight realism, social pathos, a humane sentence.
Nice but predictable.”
I thought, occupationally injured blasé, on my way into the salon.
But it doesn't take many scenes until the Belgian brothers are stroking the fingers of my prejudices.
Reminds me that they, like few others, can build great inner dynamics based on few premises.
As in "The Son", "Rosetta", "The Child" and yes, all the others.
Tori and Lokita
are on the run from an African country where Tori was believed to possess black magic, and therefore must die.
They live in a shelter in Belgium, waiting for Lokita to get her residence permit as well.
The girl is pressured from all sides, by the authorities, by the drug dealer they sell drugs to, by the refugee smugglers who want more money.
Having constant anxiety attacks but getting up.
At least they have each other.
-Why don't I get my permit?
-They don't want us here...
A banal
retort that exposes the abyss between the concepts We and Them.
That is the main merit of the film medium, to let us see the world from someone else's perspective just for a moment.
The information is handed out in spades, at well-chosen occasions that feel anything but just chosen.
Text, games, direction and camera work smoothly and intuitively.
With a few short but effective scenes, for example, the drug's path is depicted, from the gutter to inner-city hipsters.
The latter risk at most a drug hangover, Tori and Lokita in turn are dragged down another notch into the shit.
That's how Dardennes works.
They peel away bulky layers of weepy idealism and pathos-filled social theory, drilling right into the core of existence.
They belong to the absolute elite of humanism.
The story
is at the same time hyperpolitical, without even glancing at a hint.
The Dardennes don't try to short-cut our sympathies through victim porn (but don't go for blackness either).
Does not manipulate, instead carves its way straight into the soul.
So incredibly complex.
In just 88 minutes.
A lesson to all filmmakers who these days use three hours to tell nothing.