The Silence of Lorna DVD, 2008

Doug Cummings finds this complex tale to be a worthy addition to the Belgian filmmakers' body of work.

The Belgian Dardenne brothers, filmmakers among a select few who have taken the Cannes film festival’s top prize twice, remain at the top of their craft in this quiet but surprisingly complex story about a young Albanian woman (Lorna) who agrees to an illegal immigration scheme that requires her to marry a drug addict (played by an emaciated Dardenne regular, Jérémie Renier).

As with all Dardenne films, the plot thrusts their characters into a dramatic conflict rife with ethical import set in the working class town of Liège, Belgium; a microcosm of dilapidated, post-industrial Europe. Lorna’s silence is a calm, hard-as-steel interiority that makes the emotional surprises that come her way as events shift and turn in unpredictable ways, forcing her to revaluate her role in a scheme that treats people as simple commodities.

Always attuned to the mysterious courses of personal transformation that befall their protagonists, the Dardennes sensitively track Lorna’s unplanned, growing conscience revealed almost in spite of her protective rigidity and stoicism. The film is an incisive and penetrating examination of what it means to be human in today’s cut-throat economies.

Doug Cummings on 31st March 2009
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