The Unknown Girl

"A good doctor is not emotional," maintains Dr. Jenny Davin. "If you are moved by a patient's suffering, it causes a bad diagnosis." Dr. Davin runs a medical clinic in Liege and is moving swiftly up the career ladder. Late at night the clinic door buzzer rings. There is a young woman and a plea for help. The plea is ignored. Dr. Davin wants her good doctor mantra to stick for her office intern. "She will come back tomorrow," says Dr. Davin of the unknown girl. Yet the next day the woman, an immigrant, is found dead. Consumed by guilt, Dr. Davin searches for clues to who this woman is and why she died. In this way Dr. Davin enters an underworld in the community, full of fear and manipulation, that she never knew of before and from which she may not return.

The film explores enticing themes; immigrants trapped in a web of fear, finding the balance between too much emotion and too little, and – the most beguiling – the right amount of emotion for a doctor to utilize in their trade. "Wouldst thou, then, have preferred the condition of a weak woman, exposed to all evil, and capable of none?" Dr. Rappaccini asks his daughter Beatrice, in Hawthorne's wonderful story. "I would fain have been loved," answers Beatrice "not feared." Dr. Davin walks the same line between love and fear, empathy and professional judgment, arrogance and weakness, . . .

The Dardenne brothers are masters at their trade. They specialize in portraying economic and social justice, as they do here. It is a slow-paced, yet seducing film. It is two weeks after I saw the film and the lessons it teaches linger. The story simmers in a tantalizing way in my mind. Seen at the Miami International Film Festival.

Simple yet effective, The Unknown Girl starts out as a typical day in the life of Jenny Davin, a doctor running a private clinic who feels guilty not answering a late night door bell ring at the office that oddly ends up costing a young woman her life. Feeling guilty, when Davin discovers that this woman's identity is unknown she makes an effort to find out who she is so that she won't have to lie in an unmarked grave.

It's a well done movie, I'm very impressed with what they did with so little. Some what like a Dogme 95 movie in the sense that they do nothing to enhance the story, which is so basic. No music, no flashy cuts or cinematography. Nothing to make it sparkle, Yet it does. It could have been so dull but it wasn't at all, was interesting and really pulls you into the story. worth seeing.

http://cinemagardens.com

When you settle down to watch a Dardenne brothers film, you know you'll be put through the wringer. Desperate people, harrowing situations--your emotions will be put to the test. I wanted to yell at Jenny Davin at several points "You are not a character in a Dostoevsky novel! Don't take all this grief on yourself!" But so compelling is the story, and so successful is Adele Haenel at embodying this young doctor, that my sang froid soon returned.

The stalwarts Jeremie Renier and Olivier Gourmet contribute solid performances here, and bit players are often effective (the black actor playing the pimp is really scary) but it's Haenel you'll remember for a long time. She was the girl on a survival course in Les combattants, and the really vain teenager in Naissance des pieuvres; now she has made a really important title for her filmography.

While The Unknown Girl, the latest film by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne ("Two Days, One Night"), is suggestive of social and political issues such as immigration, unemployment, and economic imbalance, its main concern is with moral character, accountability, and spiritual redemption. Like many other films of the Dardenne Brothers, it is simple, natural, and direct, without using a musical background or resorting to sentimentality. Consistent with recent exceptional performances from established actresses such as Cecile de France in The Kid With a Bike and Marion Cotillard in Two Days, One Night, Adele Haenel ("Love at First Flight") is transfixing as Dr. Jenny Davin, a young general practitioner in Saraing, Belgium whose quiet strength, professionalism, and fierce determination dominate the film and make it a worthy addition to the two-time Palme d'Or winners' oeuvre.

Shot by cinematographer Alain Marcoen ("Two Days, One Night"), the film begins at a small clinic where Jenny has been filling in for the retiring Dr. Habran (Yves Larec) but must soon decide whether to accept a more lucrative position out of town. When a young boy has convulsions, Jenny deal with it promptly but later calls out her intern,, Julien (Olivier Bonnaud) for letting his emotions get the better of him, a dressing down that causes him to rethink whether or not he wants to be a doctor, though she later confesses to him that she was being high-handed. Her next admonition to Julien, however, has much more serious consequences.

When they hear an after-hours buzzing on the intercom, she instructs him to ignore it, telling the young intern that he cannot let patients rule him. When a young African woman is found dead on the opposite side of the freeway by the river Meuse, however, Jenny is riddled with guilt. It is soon clear that the deceased woman was the same person who knocked on their door late at night, yet without any identification papers, discovering her identity and the cause of her death is a challenge which becomes the central focus of the film. Though it deals with a possible criminal investigation, it is less of a "whodunit" than an exploration of the many ways in which people deal with feelings of guilt.

Realizing that if she had answered the ring, the young woman might still be alive, Jenny takes it upon herself to conduct a solo investigation. Hoping to discover the victim's name and find anyone who knew her in order to give her a proper burial, Jenny walks around the town, talking to adults and children who may have seen the woman, showing them her photo and reassuring them that any information they provide will be held in confidence. Though most are in denial and refuse to cooperate, Jenny is able to pick up important signals, especially in an interview with a teenager (Louka Minneli) when his accelerated pulse rate indicates that he may not be telling the truth.

The Unknown Girl is mostly muted with little variation in tone, but there are moments of joy when two young male patients sing a lovely song they wrote for Jenny, and when an elderly woman throws a gift of a panettone out the window into Jenny's waiting arms. It also touches on the spiritual when a man asks Jenny, "Why should I screw up my life if she's already dead?" and Jenny replies, "Because, if she were dead, she wouldn't be on our minds." While a too-neat resolution and a lack of the element of surprise keep the film from being in the top rank of the Dardennes' works, its message that healing can only begin when there is a willingness to communicate and to be responsible for one's actions is as good as any that have been delivered in previous films.

A dead body near the riverbank. An inconclusive police investigation. A prostitution network, operating from a shady bar. It sounds like the classic ingredients for a Raymond Chandler crime story. In reality, it's the set-up for 'La Fille Inconnue', the latest film by the Belgian film makers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne.

With this crime story, they explore a new genre. Usually, their films are social dramas about people on the fringes of society and their daily struggle for life. With this approach, they have made many very intense and moving films. But in my opinion, they were starting to repeat themselves. 'Deux Jours, Une Nuit', from 2014 was much acclaimed but overrated.

In many of their films, the plot development is secondary to the emotional power of the performances. Not so in 'La Fille Inconnue'. The plot is exciting and functional in carrying the story forward. The central character is a young doctor, who gets obsessed by a murder case because the victim rang her doorbell minutes before being killed. The doctor didn't answer the bell, and blames herself for it. She is determined to reveal the identity of the victim and starts an investigation of her own. Because she is a doctor, she is bound by an oath of silence and can't share her information with the police - a very clever script element. At the end, she manages to solve the crime. But at the same time, the truth confronts her with the fact that the victim would still be alive if she had opened the door.

Of course, this is not a classic crime thriller in the style of, let's say, Claude Chabrol. The Dardenne brothers remain true to their trademark hyper-realistic style and to their social conscience. The young doctor is treating poor, displaced, and lonely people. She herself is a solitary, business-like character. The film is set in the gritty industrial town of Seraing near Liège, the home base of the Dardennes. It's populated by working class people. They don't show emotions easily, and that goes for the doctor as well.

The crime element makes 'La Fille Inconnue' stand out in a positive way. It's one of the best films the Dardenne brothers have made in a long time. And it's definitely one of the best films coming out of Belgium this year. Never mind the lukewarm reception of this film in Cannes.