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.
