Review: ‘Lorna’s Silence’

LORNA’S SILENCE (Le silence de Lorna) is the title of this newest film from the filmmaking brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. The siblings’ films tend to be preoccupied with themes involving unconventional family dynamics and small-time underworld crime, such as THE PROMISE (La promesse, 1996) and THE INFANT (L’enfant, 2005). LORNA’S SILENCE is no different, featuring a story similar in theme.

Lorna (Arta Dobroshi) is a young Albanian woman working in Belgium as a dry cleaner. Her dream is to open a small snack bar/cafe with her boyfriend Sokol. In order to pay for this venture, Lorna falls in with Fabio, a taxi driver with underworld connections. Fabio arranges for Lorna to marry a local junkie named Claudy (Jeremie Renier) so that she can acquire Belgian citizenship. Once done, Lorna and Claudy will divorce so that she can marry a Russian mobster who also wishes to obtain Belgian citizenship and is willing to pay handsomely.

During her brief marriage to Claudy, Lorna finds herself caring for the junkie as he attempts to quit drugs and stay clean. Their business arrangement becomes more to Claudy as he finds he needs her around to stay clean. Meanwhile, Fabio plans to murder Claudy and make it look like he fell back into drugs and overdosed. In some strange way, Lorna develops a connection with Claudy and even throws herself at him sexually one night in an effort to keep him from using.

As the plot progresses, Lorna’s plans and Fabio’s intentions grow further apart. Lorna and Sokol have found the location for their cafe and despite the transaction with the Russian already in the works, she finds herself in a situation that puts everything in jeopardy. Lorna is torn between what she wants to do at this crucial moment in her life and what she will be forced by Fabio to do in the name of their criminal enterprise.

LORNA’S SILENCE shifts direction during a scene with Lorna excitedly running up the steps of her future cafe and nearly collapsing. When she finally sees a doctor, she discovers something that will change everything, regardless of the choice she makes. The mystery and intrigue behind this decision, however, is that we never really find out for sure whether Lorna really is experiencing this life-changing event or if it’s all a figment of her imagination, brought on by the trauma she has endured working for Fabio.

The first half of LORNA’S SILENCE is visually rather drab and sullen, much like how Lorna feels about her situation. It’s only after she realizes her dreams are at stake that the film picks up a slightly more energetic and visually engaging style. One of my favorite scenes depicts Lorna escaping from what she perceives as a threat to her life, running through a forest with a floor covered in lush green moss. Lorna is wearing her all red jump suit sort of outfit and a brown leather jacket with a fur collar.

What I found intriguing about this scene was the fantasy element, which is entirely implied by the filmmakers. It could just be that I’m reading into this too much, but it seems Lorna is taking on a bit of a Little Red Riding Hood moment in this scene. She eventually comes upon a small abandoned cabin in which she hides out and spends the night. During this escape and time in the cabin, Lorna has a dialogue that says so much about the character’s state of mind at this point of her life.

While I found much of the visual approach of LORNA’S SILENCE to be uninteresting and boring, the story itself makes up for this in droves. The film begins innocent enough, not revealing that Lorna and Fabio are conducting illegal scams until we’ve developed a certain impression of Lorna, creating a certain empathy and connection with her character. We’re misdirected at first, becoming concerned for Lorna before we realize her flaws.

Dobroshi delivered a convincing performance, but I did find myself slightly distracted by something that was no fault of her own. Dobroshi’s has short black hair, a slender figure and a child-like face, all of which combine to create a striking resemblance to Ellen Page. For this reason, I subconsciously kept finding myself thinking of Ellen Page in the role. Otherwise, Dobroshi really sells the role, especially in the end as her character enters a sort of unstable survivor mode that leaves the audience uncertain of her fate.

The Dardenne Brothers have a distinctly European realism to their films, which continues with LORNA’S SILENCE. Even though the film starts out kind of slow and uneventful, the second act develops a mystery worth following and the third act shares a wonderfully existential character breakdown that makes the movie worth seeing. The film is in French and Albanian with English subtitles and does require a bit of patience, but the pay off is worth the wait.