Film and Felt

While watching L’Enfants, the latest from the Dardenne brothers (Jean-Pierre & Luc, co-directors of Rosetta, The Son, and La Promesse), Spike Lee’s 25th Hour kept popping into my head. Like 25th Hour, L’Enfants focuses on the ultimate redemption of a sinner, but it’s debatable whether or not L’Enfants really merits its teary finale. Set in Seraing, L’Enfants portrays a struggling couple—Bruno (Jérémie Renier), and Sonia (Déborah François)—living off illegal activities in the Belgian underworld. Viewing real work as worthless, Bruno refuses to get a job, instead selling and reselling anything he can get his paws on. A newborn baby doesn’t motivate Bruno to buck up—ratherL’Enfants, after some initial lukewarm affection, he decides to sell the child to the black market. After Sonia goes into hysterics, is hospitalized, and accuses Bruno of his crime, the confused offender returns the money and reclaims the child. That’s not enough for anyone, though: Sonia refuses to speak to him, the police don’t buy his alibis (though they have no real proof to arrest him), and the mob insists that he still owes them for the trouble he put them through. As Bruno digs himself into a deeper and deeper hole, he eventually concedes himself to his fate, and after confessing to his final crime—the purse-snatching of a female pedestrian—digs in for an elongated battle with remorse, an emotion he’s finally learned he can experience.

No question, L’Enfants is extremely involving: characters are strongly fleshed out—including supporting ones with little screen time, such as Steve (Jérémie Segard), a bold-yet-scared schoolboy who frequently assists Bruno with his crimes—and the picture’s casual, almost laissez-faire treatment of a despicable action is fascinating to observe. The Dardennes don’t cheapen the severity of peddling a child: rather, they depict it from Bruno’s short-sighted perspective, the viewpoint of someone who’s more concerned with bills in his pocket than traditional values. The naturalistic hand-held camerawork and dreary colors effectively mime the downcast, depressed mood of all the participants. Indeed, it often appears that Bruno or Sonia are rarely actually happy, though they do seem to genuinely care for each other—given the odd way in which they show it, it’s remarkable that the Dardennes make this aspect of L’Enfants come across as believable. Renier embodies Bruno with the proper nonchalant demeanor, and tosses in some perfect caught-with-your-hand-in-the-cookie-jar grins for good measure. The remainder of the cast is almost as good.

Still, a few issues keep L’Enfants while not directly involved in Bruno’s criminal activities, she’s fully aware of them; her half-assed attempts at prodding him into a real job are unconvincing. from being great, the most damning flaw being that Sonia appears as irresponsible as Bruno—consequently, it’s difficult to pity her sudden despair upon losing her child. She giggles as Bruno playfully tosses stones at her, despite little Jimmy being nestled against her chest; the couple cheerfully wrestles while the boy lies in the backseat of the car; she immediately consents to Bruno spending the last of his money (250 euros) on a jacket to give them a his/her combo, not worrying about how her son is going to eat. Her lackadaisical approach to motherhood projects her as unworthy to raise a child, and All this leads to a strange emotional confusion: while Bruno certainly is a severely troubled individual, Sonia isn’t much better, yet she’s the one storming around ignoring Bruno’s pleas for forgiveness. Obviously, his actions are far more extreme than Sonia’s carelessness, but it’s not far-fetched to imagine Bruno really thinking that Sonia would support his reckless decision.

When Monty breaks down on Naturelle’s lap near the end of 25th Hour, the emotional reconciliation is a natural extension of the regret-tinged club sequence that preceded it. In L’Enfants, Bruno and Sonia’s elongated embrace at the film’s conclusion (along with Bruno’s long-delayed show of penitence) is neither touching nor credible, primarily because his greatest misdeed—the sale of the child—could have been perpetrated almost as easily by Sonia as we know her. If L’Enfants is meant as a depiction of the challenges of parenting, and the conflicting emotions it inspires (and it can certainly be interpreted as such, as it’s Steve’s arrest that prompts Bruno to finally come clean), it’s only partially successful—Bruno’s matter-of-fact, “We’ll have another. I did it for us; see? We have money now,” encapsulates his attitude throughout most of L’Enfants. Live in the moment. Then again…in impoverished Seraing, where children are brought to shadiness at a young age, where everyone recklessly gambles their money and their livelihoods…maybe that’s the point. Maybe Sonia’s sudden rekindling of warmth for Bruno is her finding a form of redemption herself, and a steely resolution will bind the two from that gloomy day on. Many fellow critics whom I respect immensely walked out of the theatre convinced they’d just witnessed genius, so don’t take my word as gospel here. Just color me in like, not in love, with the Dardennes’ cinematic approach from what I’ve seen thus far.

© Gabe Leibowitz 2005, NYFF