Always Good Movies

Direction: Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne
Country: Belgium / France

In the last decade, the Dardenne Brothers offered us an impressive sequence of pragmatic and intelligent gems such as The Kid with a Bike (2011) and Two Days, One Night (2014). However, they failed to maintain those levels of excellence in the last five years. If The Unknown Girl (2016), even forgettable, was still able to create some mystery, the most recent Young Ahmed is a disastrous, utterly conventional tale of fanaticism focused on a brainwashed Belgian teenager who, under the psychological control of an authoritative Imam (Othmane Moumen), decides to take extreme actions in the name of the Islam.

The obstinate Ahmed (newcomer Idir Ben Addi) marks his apostate teacher Ines Touzani (Myriem Akheddiou) as a target, but his plan to take her life away falls short. His single mother (Claire Bodson) almost gets relieved when he’s sent to a youth rehabilitation facility. From there, he’s taken to work on a farm, where he’s supposed to ease his spirit and change the radical posture. However, the experience becomes bittersweet since he immediately gets the attention of Louise (Victoria Bluck), a like-aged white girl who’s not afraid to demonstrate romantic interest in him. She stole his first kiss, but is Ahmed capable of redemption?

In some situations, the film is meticulously descriptive in the details, a factor that further limits the already rudimentary plot, and on the other hand, the scenes feel fabricated. All this makes it unpersuasive as a drama. Ahmed’s meek eyes and tractable pose bring his monstrous intentions to phoniness. Never haunting or hypnotic, the film basically relies on self-obsession to succeed, and any interest in Ahmed as a character may evaporate in no time. The conclusion is more ludicrous than shocking.

Directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Country: Belgium / France

The work of the Belgian brothers, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, is known for their technical rigor, narrative consistency, strong social vision, and impressive realism. With a career that spans more than 30 years, the directors gave us enough reasons to smile while staring at the screen. “Rosetta”, “L’enfant”, “The Son”, "The Promise”, and more recently, “The Kid with a Bike” and “Two Days, One Night”, brought something valuable and genuine to the world of cinema, focusing on themes like unemployment, troubled childhood, delinquency, immigration, exploitation, and many more.

In their new drama, “The Unknown Girl”, the brothers carry out some modifications, not in terms of visuals or filmmaking style, but attempting to squeeze a sort of character study within a crime thriller.
If the character was built with sufficient honesty to deserve my approval, the thriller was never more than a bland triviality, lacking true mystery and decent suspenseful moments.

The central character, Jenny Davin (Adèle Haenel), a sensitive, attentive, and respected young medical doctor living and working in Liége, Belgium, shows deep concerns about her intern, Julien (Olivier Bonnaud), who can’t put his emotions away in stressful situations. While he gets paralyzed in the worst emergencies, she insists on the importance of a good diagnosis. Whenever she admonishes him, Julien admits his faults but gets a bit sore. After all, medicine had been his true passion.

On a very busy day, someone rings Jenny’s office’s doorbell after closing time. Tired, she doesn’t open. Slightly after that, Julien runs down the stairs in such a way he seems he won’t go back there anymore. In truth, he gives up the internship and medicine, and Jenny becomes devastated by thinking she had something to do with his decision.
To worsen her state of guilt, two inspectors arrive to examine the cameras because the woman who had come after-hours was found dead by the river. The cause of her death is unknown and she couldn't be identified either. Mysteries the obsessed Jenny tries to find out by herself.
This doctor turned into fearless investigator faces some serious threats when she starts digging in the mud and learns that the culprit is closer than she ever thought.

Despite setting up with the habitual naturalistic and artistic contours, the film drags aimlessly for large periods of time in its recycled wave of ideas. Most of the dangerous situations that Jenny experiences feel fabricated and very similar one to another.
The directors, who love to shoot resorting to the available light, forgot to use some glow in their story, never going beyond the simple and often boring formalities.
“The Unknown Girl” is a minor Dardennes and, probably, their flattest work.