Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne began
making short video documentaries together in the 1970s, and then shot
their first fiction film in 1987, Falsch (False), in which the ghosts of
a Jewish family, reunited after World War II in a deserted airport, are
forced to deal with their past. The work is atypical for the Dardenne
brothers in that it is highly stylized, with vibrant colors and
theatrical staging, and while it is an excellent film, it does not
really anticipate their later work. Their second film, Je pense à vous
(You’re on My Mind, 1992), is also a surprise, in its narrative of a
factory worker photographed with conventional cinematic imagery, using
crane shots, a sweeping music track, and rather contrived performances.
However, the Dardennes’ La Promesse (The
Promise, 1996), a handheld documentary-like tale of a man and his young
son who are engaged in an illegal immigration scheme in contemporary
Belgium, hit a nerve with audiences and critics alike, confirming that
the brothers had returned to their bare-bones roots. This was followed
by the equally compelling Rosetta (1999), about a young girl who lives
with her alcoholic mother and is desperate to hang onto her job. Gritty
and uncompromising, the film follows the characters at very close range
for an unsettling cinéma vérité feel that keeps viewers continually off
balance. In 2005, the brothers completed L’En-fant (The Child), in which
a desperate young father sells his infant son for cash because he lives
in a world in which everything is for sale. When the father changes his
mind and retrieves the child, he finds that his complications have only
begun.
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