L'Enfant (2005)

Film: L'Enfant (2005)
Stars: Jeremie Renier, Deborah Francois
Director: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Oscar History: No nominations, but it did win the Palme d'Or
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

We're going to finish our trio of Palme d'Or winners I recently caught with L'Enfant, a French film from the Dardenne Brothers in 2005.  The Dardenne Brothers, for those who don't know, are basically the crown princes of Cannes.  It seems every single time they so much as think about making a movie they win a prize at the festival, and they have won the Palme twice, the second of which was L'Enfant (first was Rosetta, which I haven't seen, but don't you worry-we'll get there eventually).  I have not seen a lot of their movies (this is only my second of their movies) despite their high pedigree, and so I went into this genuinely curious as to what would unfold.  Their movies are, based on reputation, quite sad and almost always contain unusual plot twists, sometimes to the chagrin of the protagonist.  This is certainly true of L'Enfant, a hard-hitting look at a couple living below the poverty line in Belgium.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film is centered around Bruno (Renier) and Sonia (Francois) a young couple barely into adulthood who have recently had a baby named Jimmy.  Sonia is enamored with the young child, but Bruno seems largely indifferent, viewing it as little more than another amusement for his days where he peddles items on the street and alternates between living with Sonia in a homeless shelter or in a makeshift tent by the river.  Bruno ends up, about halfway through the movie, selling Jimmy to an illegal adoption agency, breaking apart Sonia's trust in him, and causing her to collapse & go to the hospital.  Bruno desperately spends most of the rest of the film trying to get Jimmy back (but for a larger cost, one he cannot afford), and regaining Sonia's trust (which he doesn't-even after he goes to jail she still cannot entirely forgive him, even if she mourns the loss of their relationship).

The movie is bleak-there are no reprieves, no proper moments that would feel like you were going to get even a sucker's hope.  Bruno is instantly supposed to be the bad guy, and while you are meant in the last thirty minutes to understand that he might have changed...it's still not enough for me.  There's trying desperately to make your life work, and then there's selling your girlfriend's baby without even asking her beforehand, and when she gets mad, simply stating "we can make another one."  Bruno's problem in the film, and it's subtle as it comes forward, isn't that he's poor (that might be the catalyst though) but that he's impossibly immature.  You see that in the way that he relates more to young teenagers with whom he executes crimes, rather than other adults, including (increasingly) Sonia, who has gained a sense of responsibility through her pregnancy that Bruno has failed to capture.

The movie is very well-acted, and its story is wrenching but real.  I didn't love it, which is weird because I generally like "cold" cinema (one of my favorite genres is film noir for a reason), but like Two Days, One Night, once I learned the story beats it was easy to see where this was headed, and for a film that relies heavily on one big twist, it doesn't always know how to sustain that.  This is a really well put together movie, but it's not one that I feel in the way I normally feel for a movie I hand out "five stars" to (which I try to do only rarely).  So it'll get four, but I understand why this was so compelling to critics & audiences, and I will continue to invest myself in the Dardennes filmography.