TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Cortechba Overrated

Micah Lloyd Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Keeley Coleman The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Rockwell_Cronenberg With Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's fifth feature film, Lorna's Silence, they decided to take a surprisingly unique approach to their style in that they made it look more like a film than anything they had done before. Gone are the intimate, gritty hand-held tracking shots that place the audience into the perspective of the characters and shoot from odd, seemingly improvised angles. Instead, each shot here is much more staged and deliberate, focused on Lorna (Arta Dobroshi) and making sure the audience is able to appreciate all of her surroundings in each moment. It was an interesting approach from the Dardennes and I have to admit a little jarring at first, but this step into a more conventional shooting style provided the film with a contrast from their previous work that I certainly appreciated.As much as I adore their other work, it was nice to see them trying something new and ultimately it worked. The more conventional style does a service for the more conventional narrative structure of the film as well, as for the first time they work with a central plot that encompasses the entire picture, rather than focusing on a more free-formed character study. Lorna is an Albanian emigrant living in Belgium, in an arranged marriage to Claudy (Jeremie Renier) in order to acquire Belgian citizenship so that she can enter another arranged marriage with the Russian Andrei (Anton Yakovlev) after her and Claudy divorce. It's an elaborate scheme all run through Fabio (Fabrizio Rongione), a taxi driver looking to make some extra cash.The setup is unexpectedly complex for the Dardennes, but what's not unexpected is how they approach the story primarily as a way to explore this character. They're not worried about whether the audience is keeping up with all of the semantics of the arranged marriages and divorces because they aren't too worried about it either; instead they're focused on how all of this is impacting Lorna, and that puts them right into their wheelhouse. In exploring this character, they take their trademark understated approach, letting the emotions sink in rather than explode outwardly. This provides for some fantastic internal acting by newcomer Arta Dobroshi, who shines even more tremendously in the few moments where she is able to let those emotions come out. The role marks a genuine "star is born" performance from Dobroshi, someone who we will hopefully be seeing much more of in the near future.The supporting cast all puts in great work, but I have to give particular mention to Renier, who shines once again in an unusual way. The Dardennes have used Renier in four of their six feature films and it's easy to see why. Without changing his physical appearance remotely he is somehow able to be a complete chameleon in each of his roles. The way he holds himself, the way he moves, the way he approaches any given situation, each and every role he is a completely new person and it's extraordinary to watch because you don't see this guy acting at all. He is the true definition of an actor, one who strips away any semblance of himself and disappears entirely into each and every new performance he gives. You look at his work in L'Infant, this and the Dardennes next feature The Kid With A Bike and it's unbelievable the transformations he goes through.One of the many interesting things here was the physicality of the film, how the muted emotions were able to manifest themselves in the physical moments such as Lorna slamming her head into a wall to prove that Claudy beats her or the raw and brazenly intimate sex scene. It's in these moments that the Dardennes' more authentic, quieter approach demonstrates it's true ability, making things that would seem ordinary in most films come as a shock and leave a lasting impact on the viewer.I won't give anything away, but around the halfway point the film takes a turn that I wasn't expecting at all and completely through me for a loop. While the Dardennes had been traveling a more conventional path than usual, in the final act they take Lorna's journey to a decidedly unique place. Their originality shines bright in this final act, with scene after scene that had my jaw open simply over how innovative they had taken the story. I can't give anything away and ruin it for others, but Lorna's Silence began in a more traditional route than I had come to expect from the Dardenne brothers and ended up going somewhere even less conventional than we had seen from them before. Yet another tremendous achievement from two of the best writer/directors working today.

alan_pavelin Having now seen it twice - what a terrific film! Arta Dobroshi is literally on screen for every single scene, and for all but a few seconds of the film: an amazing performance. When will we see more of her? The subject-matter is pretty grim, and not for those who like only romcoms and the like. I love all the Dardenne brothers films: Rosetta, The Son, and The Child, which rivals Lorna for their best in my view. Their usual trademarks are here, hand-held cameras following the characters round, usually in close-up; drab industrial surroundings (the town of Liege I believe); characters on the margins of society, including here a dodgy Russian with his interpreter. A great movie.

lastliberal Dry cleaner by day, and bride by night, Lorna (Arta Dobroshi) makes a whole lot more turning over husbands who want to live in Belgium.Her current husband, Claudy (Jeremie Renier) is a drug addict. The marriage was arranged by Fabio (Fabrizio Rongione), a real low life. She needs to get out of this marriage to marry a Russian who wants residence. Fabio will take care of that.In the meantime, she and her boyfriend Sokol (Alban Ukaj) are saving money and making plans to open a sandwich shop. She hopes the next marriage is the last and she will be free.Jeremie Renier plays a very good role. He wants to quit, but his incessant needs wear Lorna down.Arta Dobroshi is excellent. She is being used by Fabio just because she is a woman. He is only interested in money.Lorna is a victim of circumstances, and definitely a survivor.A great character driven film.

Howard Schumann The Dardenne Brothers have a habit of immersing us in the muck of life, then casually reminding us that, in case we forgot, we are surrounded by beauty. Their latest film, Lorna's Silence, is full of the trials of conflicted humanity with all too visible surface scars hiding its true nature. Set in the Belgian city of Liege, Lorna, an Albanian immigrant, is eager to realize her dream of owning a snack shop together with her boyfriend Sokol (Alban Ukaj), a long-distance truck driver. In order to pursue this goal, she has paid the sleazy mob-connected Fabio (Fabrizio Rongione) to arrange a marriage with a Belgian heroin addict, Claudy (Jérémie Renier), in exchange for Belgian citizenship.After divorcing Claudy, Lorna's plan is to marry again, this time to a Russian mobster (Anton Yakovlev) so he can get his own papers. Luc Dardenne says that the idea for the film came from a social worker who told them about an incident in which her brother, a junkie, was offered a huge sum of money by the Albanian mafia to enter into a paper marriage with an Albanian prostitute. She would then divorce him for another wad of cash and be free to marry a member of the Albanian mafia, both becoming Belgian citizens in the process.The early images are all about money. From the opening scene where bills are being counted, money is constantly being handed over, counted, refused, or buried in the ground. The cold expression on Lorna's face and her abruptness in conversation tells us almost immediately that the marriage is a fake. Lorna ignores Claudy's almost pathetic neediness while greed pervades the atmosphere. She fakes being physically abused by Claudy in order to secure evidence for a quickie divorce but Claudy is unwilling or unable to hurt her. In a scene marked by ghoulish humor, she slams herself into a door and bangs her head against a wall to fill her body with bruises.Things become complicated, however, when Claudy vows to kick his drug habit and Lorna begins to care for him, resisting Fabio's attempts to eliminate him via a drug overdose. Dobroshi delivers an outstanding performance, as does Renier who has become one of the Dardennes' most confident regulars. Though the film is more plot-driven and the camera-work less oppressively intimate than some of the brothers' earlier films, Lorna's Silence is nonetheless a gripping, powerful drama, full of searing insight into the human condition. What is most important is not the story or the movement of the camera but the continuity of the theme of the awakening of conscience.Just when we feel that the characters have no place to go but down, the Dardennes tear us away suddenly from our addiction to the physical and hurl us into a world of tenderness and infinite possibility. As Lorna senses that she is suddenly at risk, she seems to break through the cycle of futile actions that have marked her life and, even in the mundane task of gathering wood to build a fire, we sense the exhilaration of someone growing before our eyes. As the Dardennes invite us to step into a bigger world, we hear the closing reverie of Beethoven's other-worldly Piano Sonata No. 32 reminding us that we are tuned into what the Quaker poet Thomas Kelly has called "the silence which is the source of all sound".