Il matrimonio di Lorna

Lorna is well played by the actress. Lorna is a complicated woman who is involved in a game between the Belgian underground and marrying a Russian mobster. The only problem is that she is married to a drug addict who needs to die. She is also in love with a man named Sokol. She dreams of running a snack bar or cafe rather than working at the laundromat. But things slowly go awry when she can't a divorce fast enough. Her current husband wants to quit and go clean. Lorna gets paid for the marriage and the arrangement with the Russian mobster. Along the way, we learn Lorna's ethnic background and her motives. The film's ending needs to be more clear. We will never know the future for Lorna at the end and that's troubling.

The titular heroine of the Dardenne brothers latest movie is Lorna, a recent immigrant to Belgium who spends her days earning paychecks from a dry-cleaners while earning more substantial money by selling herself off as a bride to a Russian man looking to immigrate to Belgium himself. Before she can marry the Russian however, Lorna must obtain a divorce from her current husband, Claudy, a broken-down, pathetic, drug-addict who only married Lorna in order to obtain the cash to fund his habit.

The relationship between the young couple is complicated. Lorna, with a boyfriend back home and another potential husband eager to obtain Belgian citizenship waiting in the wings, has no romantic attachment to Claudy. Early scenes show her disgust and impatience for her lazy, feeble husband who does little more then shoot-up, play cards and follow her around like a puppy-dog. Nevertheless she can't help but feel sympathy towards the man she is using solely to obtain her citizenship. Claudy's feelings are equally muddled. He is aware that Lorna is using him and yet is devastated when she talks about divorce. He plays on his weaknesses to illicit Lorna's sympathy and then plagues her with childish demands. Their relationship, masterfully played out by Arta Dobroshi and returning Dardenne brother favourite Jérémie Renier, is utterly, intensely fascinating. They're both the victims and the aggressors in their relationship and who you root for and who you find repulsive flips frequently from scene to scene.

But the movie isn't focused on the relationship between Claudy and Lorna. As Lorna struggles to earn her money quickly she is forced to choose between protecting Claudy, whose desire to kick his drug-habit is problematic for her divorce proceedings, and her desire to protect her own small dream of owning a café with her long-distance boyfriend. Her optimism and strength are quickly torn apart when the man responsible for arranging both her marriages quickly yanks her down to reality by reminding her that she is little more then a pawn for people who want to cheat the system. The movie falls apart in the final third, the twists and turns a bit ridiculous given the slow, yet gripping, pace of the previous sections. And yet the movie is still compelling, quietly questioning a system in which people must go to such violent lengths in order to obtain simple and innocent desires.

The lack of music, gritty cinematography and superb acting all lend itself to the feelings of realism that pervade the film. The Dardenne brothers make us believe in Lorna's plight, her struggle between what she feels morally is right and the silence that will enable her to live out her dream.

LORNA'S SILENCE is a film that very quietly grabs you by the throat and makes you pay attention to the stories of several emigrants that spin out of control. It is written and directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne with an eye for verismo in the seamier side of the immigration problems.

The story is set in Belgium where Lorna (Arta Dobroshi) works at a dry cleaners then goes home to her 'husband' Claudy (Jérémie Renier), a junkie who has been duped by Lorna and her little crime gang of cab driver Fabio (Fabrizio Rongione) and her boyfriend Sokol (Alban Ukaj)into marrying Lorna so that the Albanian girl can gain Belgian citizenship. Claudy seems a hopeless case, in withdrawal for the umpteenth time but committed to getting off heroin. He pleads with his 'arranged wife' to help him with his attempt to get clean. Meanwhile Fabio has other plans: Lorna is to 'marry' a wealthy Russian mobster to gain Belgian citizenship (a second arranged marriage) and in order for the second marriage to occur, Lorna must consent to letting Claudy overdose on heroin and die, making her a widow eligible for marriage. The other side story is that Lorna, now a Belgian citizen, can proceed with Sokol to set up a snack shop with Sokol using all the money she gains from the 'marriage game'.

All is well until Claudy convinces Lorna to help him get to a hospital and get 'clean' and along the way Lorna's feelings for Claudy turn to compassion and passion. An incident occurs that throws all of the plans to the wind and Lorna is left with her secret and will hopefully manage to find a stable life without the crime influence.

The acting is first rate and the moody atmosphere created is spellbinding. This is a little film that has a lot to say about the plight of immigrants.

Grady Harp

The Dardenne Brothers have a habit of immersing us in the muck of life, then casually reminding us that, in case we forgot, we are surrounded by beauty. Their latest film, Lorna's Silence, is full of the trials of conflicted humanity with all too visible surface scars hiding its true nature. Set in the Belgian city of Liege, Lorna, an Albanian immigrant, is eager to realize her dream of owning a snack shop together with her boyfriend Sokol (Alban Ukaj), a long-distance truck driver. In order to pursue this goal, she has paid the sleazy mob-connected Fabio (Fabrizio Rongione) to arrange a marriage with a Belgian heroin addict, Claudy (Jérémie Renier), in exchange for Belgian citizenship.

After divorcing Claudy, Lorna's plan is to marry again, this time to a Russian mobster (Anton Yakovlev) so he can get his own papers. Luc Dardenne says that the idea for the film came from a social worker who told them about an incident in which her brother, a junkie, was offered a huge sum of money by the Albanian mafia to enter into a paper marriage with an Albanian prostitute. She would then divorce him for another wad of cash and be free to marry a member of the Albanian mafia, both becoming Belgian citizens in the process.

The early images are all about money. From the opening scene where bills are being counted, money is constantly being handed over, counted, refused, or buried in the ground. The cold expression on Lorna's face and her abruptness in conversation tells us almost immediately that the marriage is a fake. Lorna ignores Claudy's almost pathetic neediness while greed pervades the atmosphere. She fakes being physically abused by Claudy in order to secure evidence for a quickie divorce but Claudy is unwilling or unable to hurt her. In a scene marked by ghoulish humor, she slams herself into a door and bangs her head against a wall to fill her body with bruises.

Things become complicated, however, when Claudy vows to kick his drug habit and Lorna begins to care for him, resisting Fabio's attempts to eliminate him via a drug overdose. Dobroshi delivers an outstanding performance, as does Renier who has become one of the Dardennes' most confident regulars. Though the film is more plot-driven and the camera-work less oppressively intimate than some of the brothers' earlier films, Lorna's Silence is nonetheless a gripping, powerful drama, full of searing insight into the human condition. What is most important is not the story or the movement of the camera but the continuity of the theme of the awakening of conscience.

Just when we feel that the characters have no place to go but down, the Dardennes tear us away suddenly from our addiction to the physical and hurl us into a world of tenderness and infinite possibility. As Lorna senses that she is suddenly at risk, she seems to break through the cycle of futile actions that have marked her life and, even in the mundane task of gathering wood to build a fire, we sense the exhilaration of someone growing before our eyes. As the Dardennes invite us to step into a bigger world, we hear the closing reverie of Beethoven's other-worldly Piano Sonata No. 32 reminding us that we are tuned into what the Quaker poet Thomas Kelly has called "the silence which is the source of all sound".

When we first see the protagonist of 2008 Belgian film The Silence of Lorna, they are flitting around the general area in which they habit; darting from the shops, back through the streets and then home again to an unwelcoming and droll apartment. Their partner is home, smoking and listening to loud rock music. The partner apologises and tells the lead that they'll stop going out and doing what it is they're doing, an exchange that we feel may have just played out for the umpteenth time. The home quarters are colourless and drab, the walls undecorated and furniture sparse – perhaps they've just moved in, perhaps they're really poor or maybe something more sinister is going on. We wonder what the ragged looking partner does that forces them to be as apologetic as they are, the suggestion that they play a friendly game of cards together might itself suggest a gambling problem; the manner in which the partner is shot, that is to say from behind, gets across a sense of anonymity or alienation about them on first sighting, particularly in regards to how the character feels towards them. Very quickly, the Dardenne brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc have caught us up in the world of these people through their realist style and wonderful techniques; a sensation that does not abate until the very end.

The lead is the titular Lorna (Dobroshi), a young woman; an Albanian immigrant living illegally within the Belgian city of Leige and in a false, loveless marriage to the aforementioned partner who's named Claudy (Renier). Lorna's a simple enough girl with relatively attainable aspirations although living amidst a complicated scheme, her tone quiet; her dress sense normalised and in Kosovo born actress Arta Dobroshi, an uncomplicated; unspectacular; unknown acting quantity whom carries a close to all but innocent expression on her face throughout as grins at the situation she's in and bears it. Lorna already has a partner away from Claudy whom is also Albanian, a man named Sokol (Ukaj), and has her eye on a disused structure sitting idly on a plot of land that she one day hopes to turn into a snack bar-come-restaurant with him so as to bring in the cash. Her confidant is a local gangster with broader connections to a Russian criminal organisation; somebody we feel she'd have absolutely nothing to do with ordinarily – a cab driver named Fabio (Rongione) whom is able to access her the necessary items needed to live in Belgium out from under this shroud of seediness and falsity.

The film is a wonderful, involving mediation on the morality that comes with most of the actions, reactions and scenarios of what Lorna is facing within the film. Living with a man as unappealing as she does; using somebody else for her own gain and breaking international rules so as to be in a designated place are crimes she has either committed or is on the way to committing before the film has even begun. Complications that arise later on with the organisation of somebody's death stretch the band a tad too much for poor Lorna, and it's then she realises the trouble her actions have put both her, and those around her, in. The Dardenne's balance this agonising central character study and the torn morals that come with it with the back-burning gangsters whom oppose Lorna's anti cut-throat ideas of divorce because they incur police involvement. The result is a beautifully crafted and solid piece of drama that's gripping from its humble beginnings right through to its terrifying finale.

By day, Lorna works in a laundromat steaming sheets and pressing clothes and so forth. The job entails pressing out and washing out both the grime and creases from numerous sheets which come in, something that echos what she has going on in her private life as her very soul begins to collect the grime and the creases that come with operating within the world she's operating and dealing with the people she's dealing. The grime threatens to reach a breaking point, so much so that a ploy to organise a case of faux-domestic abuse involving Claudy may just be enough to at least save his life as the Russians plan to simply have him overdose; a death which is clearly a step too far from Lorna's perspective and something far too weighty for her conscience to take.

The film is a quietly murky piece, and it's this event which does so well in capturing this overlying canopy. Lorna and Claudy being forced by way of the state of desperation they're in to forge a domestic abuse scenario in which one is the victim and one the aggressor. The agonising planning of this event; the excruciating practising of it that must be completed prior to the execution proper and then the fallout which unfolds as a result of it are individual instances that manifest because of what these desperate characters have got themselves involved in. This being a film about process, about processes and the tortuous carrying out of a number of procedures so as to hopefully spawn a fresher, more hopeful dawn is captured wonderfully by the two sibling directors. There's a coldness to proceedings, a detached sense of everybody within the film not liking one another at all although never daring to actually admit it with the long takes that're applied handled expertly: the emotions of pain; frustration; anger and weakness which begins to manifest within numerous characters gradually rearing themselves on the faces within. The film is a brilliant character study, an unnerving thriller and a quite brilliant piece.