A Garota Desconhecida

"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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.