"Lorna" and Arta

A year and change after its Cannes Film Festival debut, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Lorna's Silence is having its U.S. theatrical debut tomorrow. I've seen the picture a few times now and I've got to say that it's really become my favorite Dardenne brothers movie, and for a very specific reason, I think. We'll get to that, if you haven't guessed already. Anyhow, here's what I wrote about the picture from Cannes back in '08: 

"The Lorna of the title is a young Albanian woman in Belgium who's just won her residency there. She has big plans—once her itinerant laborer boyfriend, who's jobbing it all over the E.U., gets in, they're going to open a snack bar together. All is hardly rosy, though, because Lorna got her residency via an arranged marriage to heroin addict Claudy (Dardennes stalwart Jeremie Regnier). The mobsters who got Lorna into the country and the marriage in the first place plan to kill Claudy with a fake overdose, after which Lorna will earn her freedom, and a big payday, by marrying a Russian in order to get him a residency. The efficient, organized, hard-working and seemingly pretty cold Lorna's plans start to go astray when Claudy makes a surprisingly good-faith attempt to straighten himself out. She's been looking at him as a rung on a ladder, but soon she's forced to recognize this genuinely meek and sweet fuckup as a human being.

The Dardennes' movies generally feature morally compromised protagonists who stumble onto the road to redemption without even knowing it. Their Lorna, played with exemplary quietude by Arta Dobroshi, succumbs to a kind of holy madness a little after the midpoint of the film, but in a very canny performing decision, she doesn't give any behavioral signs of that madness; she acts just as she has acted all through the film. It's just what she does that's different.

Critics often compare the Dardennes' films to those of Robert Bresson, but I'm not sure that's a terribly useful reference point any more. Their visual style is entirely more conventional (which is not to impugn its gracefulness); and while it wouldn't be true to say that Bresson wasn't as interested as story momentum as the Dardennes are, their approach to storytelling isn't as Bresson-inflectedly-idiosyncratic as some might tell you. Which is my hifalutin way of professing that Lorna is an entirely accessible film, one that moviegoers who like a nice juicy tale ought not be scared of."

I expanded upon some of my points writing about a British DVD of the film for The Auteurs:

"If anything, Lorna represents a deepening of the Dardennes' perspective and methods. The story of an Albanian illegal immigrant in Belgium whose conscience forces her to reject the scam marriage schemes she's involved herself in so as to gain legal status, the film's suspense component is sharper than anything they've done before. Its political perspective is more acute. And finally, its intimations of the mystical are the most moving of anything they've yet done. It is a well-nigh perfect film...largely because of Dobroshi, whose very bearing grows more profound as the film progresses, who finally emerges as a heroine worthy of both of those two antipodes, Dreyer and Bresson."

It is Dobroshi who really makes the film special for me. In the world of the Dardennes,the performers are obliged to pretty much bury their charisma (look at Regnier here and in L'Enfant, and then look at him in Assayas' Summer Hours); Dobroshi's sheer presence goes beyond charisma, beyond the "exemplary quietude" I cited when I first saw the film, and into sheer grace. Her work as Lorna is one of the most galvanic female performances I've seen in a European film in years, comparable to Irene Jacob's performance in The Double Life of Veronique. Do check Lorna out and let me know if you agree. 

Comments

[Phil]

I agree that Arta Dobroshi is stunning in The Silence of Lorna; it's one of the decade's great female performances for me. I was fortunate enough to get a chance to meet her last year for an interview, and she's also a lovely person. It will be fascinating to see where she takes her career from this point.

For anyone who's interested, you can read my interview with her here: http://philonfilm.blogspot.com/2008/11/interview-arta-dobroshi.html

[Uluc Yilmaz]

I also agree with your thoughts, a great performance that gave me chills. (Near the end of the film when we find out where her last trip may lead her to, I felt a real three dimensional excitement that is impossible to find in 3d movies). She also reminded me of Isabelle Adjani in The Story of Adele H., another great performance.