April 6, 2006

L’Enfant
Written and Directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
opens April 7 at the Harvard Exit

By LESTER GRAY
Arts Editor

The Dardenne brothers are uniquely accomplished and, despite several prestigious awards, underappreciated. In film after film, they present complex characters, not caricatures, from society’s margins; no standard Law & Order perps, these. From furnishings and transportation to makeshift family trees and survival-shaped probity, the raw tableau against which these lives take place requires little suspension of disbelief. The drama begins well before the curtain is raised and continues long after it falls. We get a segment of the arc, the plot points subdued.

With L’ Entant, the Dardennes captured their second Cannes Palme d’Or award in six years, a rare accomplishment (only three other awardees have won it twice). In this film, Sonia (Déborah François) has just given birth to a baby boy. Returning to her apartment, she finds it has been sublet by her boyfriend Bruno (Jérémie Renier), a Dickensian street hustler, who “employs” a couple of pre-teen underlings. Sonia finally locates her beau on the job doing double-duty: aggressively panhandling from cars at a stoplight and simultaneously serving as some type of lookout. Presented with his new son for the first time right there on the street, he is at a loss to produce much of a natured or nurtured instinct.

The new parents are young. They spend foolishly, with an impulsiveness that speaks of the immediacy of their lives; there is little to be gained by delaying gratification. Sonia, who has carried the baby for nine months, is fully bonded with her child. Although Bruno makes an effort to connect with his progeny, the ties-that-bind never cinch.

But the petty thief does find value in the child. Having learned of the large sums adoption-minded couples pay for a newborn, he sells the child on the black market. When Sonia, not having been consulted, learns of her boyfriend’s deed, she becomes furious and Bruno is faced with having to undo his act. His rocky path to redemption forms the heart of the film.

In L’Enfant, we have a recurring theme in the work of the Dardennes: to a certain extent, the expense of morality, like a tax, is regressive. In their 1999 Rosetta, the protagonist hesitates to rescue a drowning acquaintance because she wants his job. He forgives her and continues to seek her affection. In La Promesse, Roger, a man employing illegal aliens, fails to seek medical attention for his critically injured worker. He fears his malfeasance will be discovered and his source of income cut off. In L’Enfant, Bruno, certainly not a mean-spirited sort, commits an act he knows is wrong, but lacks perspective on its gravity. In these worlds, the prescribed ethics of the bourgeois are scrutinized on a case-by-case basis.

Despite the subject matter, the Dardenne’s works are neither dour nor didactic. They are not judgmental. The stories and the characters in them move forward with the requisite energy and structure of compelling fictive devices. The entertainment value comes from drama that’s in and of a world seldom captured effectively, where just making a living is an adventure of its own. n