LA PROMESSE (83) (second viewing: 81)

Directed by: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Starring: Jeremie Renier, Olivier Gourmet, Assita Ouedraogo

The Pitch: A slum landlord's 15-year-old son learns to do the right thing, though it means going against his loving-but-domineering father.

Theo Sez: The litany of production companies (more than a dozen) in the opening credits testifies to the difficulty of getting films like this made nowadays - totally transparent, determinedly non-flashy films without a hint of ego, dedicated only to getting a story onscreen with as much truthfulness and complexity as possible. Calling it TV-like no doubt reflects its unostentatious naturalism but grossly undervalues its marvellous organic flow, the way every shot seems to serve a purpose so you feel nothing is wasted (it's the kind of movie where you sit down to watch ten minutes and find yourself halfway through before you know it) ; nor is it enough to say that "everyone has their reasons" here, for it goes way beyond the careful even-handedness of such relatively one-dimensional tales of father-son conflict as ULEE'S GOLD. Its dynamics are intricate and subtle, a kind of wry variation on the age-old story of the father who wants his son to put away childish things and go to work in the family business - except the family business here is dehumanisation, and the father, a decent man according to his lights, can't see that his boy (whom he loves) is still just enough of a boy to care about people, and to try and keep the promises he makes. Not that the kid's motivation is spelled out in any way (only the title makes it explicit), for this is a film that shuns any kind of contrivance or melodrama - the single most important event takes place offscreen, and, even when the boy finally confronts his father in a high-octane climax, all we see of him is the back of his head (oddly enough, it's more powerful that way) ; the result, never judging or taking sides and filled with gratuitous yet somehow important detail (the man's ear-drops, the boy's bad teeth), is timeless Oedipal drama disguised as fly-on-the-wall documentary. It's just heartbreaking ; with a stronger ending, it might've been a classic.

Second viewing, seen as the first in a Dardennes triple (all second viewings), so I guess it makes sense to talk about all three. LA PROMESSE is easily their most plot-heavy movie so far - indeed it's action-packed, totally compelling for the first hour or so, let down only by the final act; we need a strong relationship between the boy and the black woman, as strong as the one between the boy and his father, and it's just not there. She's written as a clever mix of 'primitive' and sophisticated, but the cleverness shows through and she's not as organically imagined as Gourmet's working-class dad, with his ear-drops and special ring on his finger (you might say the Dardennes have a sense of humour about him, but not about her). Remarkably powerful, the film still has a touch of the TV movie.

ROSETTA and THE SON are vastly more ambitious, though the first must now be seen as an honourable failure. It's about a person who is in fact insane, so brutalised by poverty and obsessed with the idea of a "normal" life she's become dehumanised, lost all ability to empathise; Stuart Klawans (his review is included in "Left in the Dark") reckons the interlude in Riquet's apartment provides relief - "Romance, song, suspense: Have they ever been felt more intensely in a movie than they are here...?" - but what I saw was a girl behaving like an animal or autistic person, locked in her world, and Riquet looking at her goggle-eyed. The trouble is that Emilie Dequenne is inexpressive, even within the confines of the role (watching the film after LA PROMESSE didn't do it any favours), and the Dardennes falter with the more 'conceptual' elements, from the character herself to the quicksand-infested pond (the murk, or maybe Death itself) that's like something out of a sci-fi movie; the ending, stopping the film on her first tentative sign of human emotion, feels schematic. 

THE SON is something else again, a very slow burner built around silence and the trademark Dardennes shot of something glimpsed through a crack in the wall or door left ajar; the whole film is like that, often with Olivier Gourmet's face being the thing imperfectly glimpsed - the camera is just behind his shoulder - though the frame also gets blocked, hidden and divided by doors, car seats, etc. Not so tense on second viewing, but the parcelling-out of information remains superbly controlled, the rhythm never falters (the Dardennes' editor(s) deserve(s) much of the credit for these movies), the sense of detail is back after ROSETTA - e.g. stubbing out a half-smoked cigarette on his shoe and putting the butt in his pocket - and the boy matches Gourmet all the way; they're both lonely, and both racked by nightmares. The ending is foreshadowed all along, but it's still a shock that it's so simple.