Lorna’s Silence (a J!-ENT DVD Review)

December 25, 2009 by Dennis Amith 

Another solid film from the Dardenne brothers!  Featuring a wonderful performance from the talent and an absolutely captivating film from beginning to end!

Image courtesy of © 2008 Les Films de Fleuve. All Rights Reserved.

TITLE: Lorna’s Silence (Le Silence de Lorna)

DURATION: 105 Minutes

DVD INFORMATION: Anamorphic Widescreen (1:85:1), French 5.1 Dolby Digital, English subtitles

COMPANY: Sony Pictures Classics

RELEASED: January 5, 2010

Written and Directed by Jeane-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne

Produced by Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Denis Freyd

Associate Producer: Sabine de Mardt, Christoph Thoke

Line Producer: Olivier Bronckart

Cinematography by Alain Mrcoen

Edited by Marie-Helene Dozo

Production Design by Igor Gabriel

Starring:

Arta Dobroshi as Lorna

Jeremie Renier as Claudy Moreau

Fabrizio Rongione as Fabio

Alban Ukaj as Sokol

Morgan Marinne as Spirou

From the internationally acclaimed writing-directing team of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (L’Enfant, The Promise) comes the powerful story of a young woman caught between love and the law. Beholden to a criminal underground, Lorna (Arta Dobroshi) is the key figure in a conspiracy to obtain European citizenship for a dangerous Russian mobster. For the plan to succeed, a desperate addict must die. If Lorna follows her heart, it will lead her into grave danger – for in her world, no act of mercy goes unpunished.

In 2008, the Dardenne brothers – Jean-Pierre and Luc, known for their critically acclaimed and award winning films “L’enfant” (The Child) , “Le fils” (The Son) and La promesse” (The Promise) returned with “Le silence de Lorna” (Lorna’s Promise” which would come to the 2008 Cannes Film Festival and win “Best Screenplay” and also win a Lumiere Award for “Best French Language Film”.

The film revolves around an Albanian woman named Lorna (played by Arta Dobroshi) who lives in Belgium.   She seems to be a normal, hard working woman until you discover that behind-the-scenes, her life is not what you expect.   She is working with a mobster named Fabio (played by Fabrizio Rongione) and together they have worked out a plan in order to obtain Belgian citizenship by marrying a junkie named Claudy (played by Jérémie Renier).   Then all she has to do is make sure she follows Fabio’s twisted plan, so that she can divorce him and then marry a Russian man who is willing to pay a lot of money for Belgian citizenship.  Meanwhile, Lorna has a happy relationship with her boyfriend Sokol (played by Alban Ukaj) who is aware of the underground dealings and encourages her to make money, so they both can own their own cafe.

As the plan seems to be going fine and life is going good for Lorna, out of nowhere, Claudy shows up to her home and asks for her help as he wants to straighten his life out away from drugs.  He has been without drugs and is now going through the withdrawals and desperately asks Lorna to help him through his detox.  Hesitant at first, Lorna slowly starts to find herself doing good by helping Claudy through his turmoil and that is when she discovers that Claudy is a good man and now she feels that she must help him but she knows that in order for Fabio’s plan to work, she must convince him to beat on her (in order to gain a quick divorce) or else…Claudy must die.

And to make things even more complicated for Lorna, something unexpected happens to her that will change her life forever.

VIDEO & AUDIO:

“Lorna’s Silence” is featured in 1:85:1 Anamorphic Widescreen.  For the most part, the film looks good until we see the reds of her sweater and pants.  It is when we see the reds that there is some compression artifacting but for the most part, for a DVD release, the film looks good and the cinematography by Alain Marcoen (“L’enfant”, “L’fils”) is well-done in capturing the various settings that Lorna visits.

As for audio, the film is presented in French 5.1 Dolby Digital and the film is front and center channel driven with dialogue.  There are not many action scenes in this film and is primarily dialogue driven, so audio is clear and understandable.

Subtitles are in English.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

There are no special features included on this DVD but trailers for upcoming Sony Pictures Classics releases.

“Lorna’s silence” is a gripping film about a woman who is part of an underground scheme in order to obtain (and help’s other’s obtain) legal citizenship in Belgium and marry and later divorce men for money.  In this case, her situation is complicated because she ends up finding herself doing some good in her life by helping her junkie husband, Claudy.  She has no strong binds to him as a “fake wife” but he has no one in his life but her to turn to and help him straighten his life out.

At first she sees him a nuisance and getting in the way of Fabio’s plans but what is unexpected is that Claudy is not a bad man and most importantly, Lorna is not a bad woman.  He’s gotten caught up with drugs but wants to straighten out his life and Lorna makes a promise that if they divorce, she will still continue to help straighten out.  But unfortunately, Lorna doesn’t realize that working with mobsters… aside from the money she’s going to make, the life she chose is not going to be easy going and throughout the film, we see Lorna starting to feel the repercussions of her decisions and what she will do in order to find redemption in her life.

The DVD is pretty much barebones and there are no featurettes included but for the film itself, the Dardenne brothers have come up with another film that is well-written and captures your attention from beginning to end.  A solid performance from Arta Dobroshi and Jérémie Renier.  Definitely a film worth watching!