Lorna's Silence (Review)

The Dardenne brothers deliver another neorealist gem

Sep 20, 2009 at 2:06 pm

Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne craft an evocative story about Lorna, a young Albanian woman (played flawlessly in a break-out performance by Kosovo-born Arta Dobroshi) in cahoots with Fabio, a Belgian mobster, to make money so she can open a snack bar with her boyfriend. Lorna suffers through a fraud marriage to Claudy (well played by Jeremie Renier), a junkie that Fabio plans to kill in order to put Lorna in another sham marriage, this time to a rich Russian.

If the plot sounds convoluted, it doesn’t impede an inevitable flood of surprising physical and emotional responses from the poker-faced Lorna. Grade: A-