Movies

"Lorna" and Arta

By July 30, 2009No Comments
Lorna-3

A year and change after its Cannes Film Festival debut, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s Lorna’s Silence is hav­ing its U.S. the­at­ric­al debut tomor­row. I’ve seen the pic­ture a few times now and I’ve got to say that it’s really become my favor­ite Dardenne broth­ers movie, and for a very spe­cif­ic reas­on, I think. We’ll get to that, if you haven’t guessed already. Anyhow, here’s what I wrote about the pic­ture from Cannes back in ’08: 

“The Lorna of the title is a young Albanian woman in Belgium who’s just won her res­id­ency there. She has big plans—once her itin­er­ant laborer boy­friend, who’s job­bing it all over the E.U., gets in, they’re going to open a snack bar togeth­er. All is hardly rosy, though, because Lorna got her res­id­ency via an arranged mar­riage to heroin addict Claudy (Dardennes stal­wart Jeremie Regnier). The mob­sters who got Lorna into the coun­try and the mar­riage in the first place plan to kill Claudy with a fake over­dose, after which Lorna will earn her free­dom, and a big pay­day, by mar­ry­ing a Russian in order to get him a res­id­ency. The effi­cient, organ­ized, hard-working and seem­ingly pretty cold Lorna’s plans start to go astray when Claudy makes a sur­pris­ingly good-faith attempt to straight­en him­self out. She’s been look­ing at him as a rung on a lad­der, but soon she’s forced to recog­nize this genu­inely meek and sweet fuckup as a human being.

The Dardennes’ movies gen­er­ally fea­ture mor­ally com­prom­ised prot­ag­on­ists who stumble onto the road to redemp­tion without even know­ing it. Their Lorna, played with exem­plary quiet­ude by Arta Dobroshi, suc­cumbs to a kind of holy mad­ness a little after the mid­point of the film, but in a very canny per­form­ing decision, she does­n’t give any beha­vi­or­al signs of that mad­ness; she acts just as she has acted all through the film. It’s just what she does that’s different.

Critics often com­pare the Dardennes’ films to those of Robert Bresson, but I’m not sure that’s a ter­ribly use­ful ref­er­ence point any more. Their visu­al style is entirely more con­ven­tion­al (which is not to impugn its grace­ful­ness); and while it would­n’t be true to say that Bresson was­n’t as inter­ested as story momentum as the Dardennes are, their approach to storytelling isn’t as Bresson-inflectedly-idiosyncratic as some might tell you. Which is my hifalutin way of pro­fess­ing that Lorna is an entirely access­ible film, one that movie­go­ers who like a nice juicy tale ought not be scared of.”

I expan­ded upon some of my points writ­ing about a British DVD of the film for The Auteurs:

“If any­thing, Lorna rep­res­ents a deep­en­ing of the Dardennes’ per­spect­ive and meth­ods. The story of an Albanian illeg­al immig­rant in Belgium whose con­science forces her to reject the scam mar­riage schemes she’s involved her­self in so as to gain leg­al status, the film’s sus­pense com­pon­ent is sharp­er than any­thing they’ve done before. Its polit­ic­al per­spect­ive is more acute. And finally, its intim­a­tions of the mys­tic­al are the most mov­ing of any­thing they’ve yet done. It is a well-nigh per­fect film…largely because of Dobroshi, whose very bear­ing grows more pro­found as the film pro­gresses, who finally emerges as a heroine worthy of both of those two anti­podes, Dreyer and Bresson.”

It is Dobroshi who really makes the film spe­cial for me. In the world of the Dardennes,the per­formers are obliged to pretty much bury their cha­risma (look at Regnier here and in L’Enfant, and then look at him in Assayas’ Summer Hours); Dobroshi’s sheer pres­ence goes bey­ond cha­risma, bey­ond the “exem­plary quiet­ude” I cited when I first saw the film, and into sheer grace. Her work as Lorna is one of the most gal­van­ic female per­form­ances I’ve seen in a European film in years, com­par­able to Irene Jacob’s per­form­ance in The Double Life of Veronique. Do check Lorna out and let me know if you agree. 

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No Comments

  • Phil says:
    July 30, 2009 at 7:23 pm

    I agree that Arta Dobroshi is stun­ning in The Silence of Lorna; it’s one of the dec­ade’s great female per­form­ances for me. I was for­tu­nate enough to get a chance to meet her last year for an inter­view, and she’s also a lovely per­son. It will be fas­cin­at­ing to see where she takes her career from this point.
    For any­one who’s inter­ested, you can read my inter­view with her here: http://philonfilm.blogspot.com/2008/11/interview-arta-dobroshi.html

  • Uluc Yilmaz says:
    July 31, 2009 at 4:19 am

    I also agree with your thoughts, a great per­form­ance that gave me chills. (Near the end of the film when we find out where her last trip may lead her to, I felt a real three dimen­sion­al excite­ment that is impossible to find in 3d movies). She also reminded me of Isabelle Adjani in The Story of Adele H., anoth­er great performance.