The Unknown Girl

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 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.

"The Unknown Girl" is one of the most refreshing and original pictures to come out in several years. It is a character study of a female doctor coming to grips with her conscience as she ignores a frantic after-hours caller who is subsequently killed. She becomes a part- time detective to find out what happened to the girl, becoming obsessed at the expense of her practice and at considerable risk to her own safety.

French actress Adele Haenel gives a thoughtful, understated performance as the doctor/ detective. She is in nearly every scene, wearing a hooded parka out of season and with a determined innocence and disregard for normal investigative procedure, which she improvises as she goes. The film achieves the 'suspension of disbelief' necessary for films to work, and receives great assistance from an almost-perfect mise en scene on the streets of Liege, Belgium. It becomes real, for an hour and 50 minutes. Ignore bad reviews and see if you agree it is as close to perfection as filmdom can get.

Dr Jenny Davin is a young go getter, she is running a small practice but is destined for much better things in the filed of medicine. She has an intern/locum who she rides pretty hard and seems to be lacking in all but professional courtesies.

Then one night her practice door bell rings and she refuses to have it answered. Later she finds that it was the last attempt of a young girl to get help before she was murdered. Faced with the weight of what she has done – or rather not done – she becomes obsessed with finding out who the girl was and so begins a quest for the truth.

This is a bleak film, the town is crumbling and grey and everything has the feel of neglect – this is replicated in the way some of the people are treated and the victim is no exception. However, at the centre of it all is hope and decency and so the two are finely balanced against each other in a way that holds the yin and yang together nicely.

The acting is all great too and it will keep your attention until the final reveal. It is well written directed and shot too – so not a lot not to like – in French this is a film for those who like to an unusual plot and appreciate the smaller things that cinema has to offer.

It's a small and dull city as many other in Belgium and Europe. It is inhabited by a mixed population, 'local' Europeans, more recent but well integrated Europeans (some of them are police inspectors), recent immigrants, some legal, some not. Again, as in many other cities of Belgium and Europe. This quite typical landscape of a place like many other in an Europe in change is the setting for 'La fille inconnue' the most recent film of brothers Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne and as in many of their recent movies the characters fight not only the dullness of life and problems in communication but also face moral choices and need to assume responsibility for their acts.

The lead character is a young doctor in the community, who deeply cares about her patients. Being just a professional is not enough if you are a physician, this kind of message is quite obvious and smartly developed, as the best scenes in the film are the ones where we see doctor Jenny Davin interacting with her patients, taking care of their bodies but also of their life conditions and eventually of their souls. When faced with the guilt of not having answered a ring at the door much later than her work hours, which led to the tragic death of a young woman apparently followed by some bad people, the feelings of guilt will lead her to run her own inquiry with the main goal of discovering the identity of the victim and ensuring her family knows her fate, and that she is properly put to rest. This will let to the eventual discovery of the murderer, in a case that involves a non-negligible dose of shared responsibility of the people who surrounded her.

The film is very much based on the lead character, one of these people who are capable of showing compassion and giving almost everything in there personal lives in order to help their human fellows. From this point of view it resembles another film of the Dardenne brothers which I liked a lot - The Kid with a Bike (Le gamin au velo). There are bad people in this world, but there are also good ones, and it's worth making films about them - this seems to be the shared message of the two films. 'La fille inconnue' however lacks the magnetism of The Kid and although Adèle Haenel gives a remarkable performance, this is not enough to fill in for the lack of pace and the rather unconvincing ending. Brother Dardenne's characters may seem to good to be true, and they do not owe anybody an explanation for being so - that's fine, but in the absence of a solid motivation there need to be more dramatic substance in the story. This is exactly what is missing in this film, just seeing good people in action in a difficult community may be enough for a documentary, but not for a full feature.