LORNA’S SILENCE (Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, 2008)

Le silence de Lorna is the best thing that Belgium’s writing-directing Dardenne brothers, Luc and Jean-Pierre, have done (best screenplay, Cannes). Like other Dardenne films, it is about immigrants in Belgium. Lorna and lover Sokol are Albanians who hope to start up a snack bar. Fabio, an Italian taxi cab driver, connives to get Lorna permanent residential status by convincing Claudy, a drug addict, to marry her so that, once Claudy is eliminated (either by overdose or whatever other necessary means), Lorna can marry Andrei, a stinking rich Russian smuggler, who wants a European Union passport. Andrei will generously pay everyone. But a hitch comes into play: Claudy’s intense effort to clean up his act touches Lorna’s heart. She will pay dearly for her silence in not letting Claudy know about the plan to kill him.
     Actually, the “silence” of the title refers to several things; but the vision that the Dardennes fashion—and, unlike their other films, this one is visionary—is as much about talk as about silence: the schemes and dreams of immigrants in an undone, upside-down, shaken-loose Europe. A culminating metaphor for current European uncertainty is that Lorna may be pregnant by Claudy, who has “left the scene”: one doctor says she is pregnant, while another says she is not. Believing herself to be, ironically, steels Lorna’s determination to keep herself and the fetus alive when Fabio’s henchman, she believes, is trying to kill her for screwing up Fabio’s elaborate plot. She ends up in a dark fairy-tale forest cabin—alone, talking to Claudy’s possibly nonexistent son or daughter, whom she will not betray as she did the father.
     Arta Dobroshi beautifully plays Lorna, whose moral sense belatedly kicks into high gear; Jérémie Renier is brilliant as Claudy.

KRISTIN LAVRANSDATTER (Liv Ullmann, 1995)

From Kransen, the first part of Danish-born, Norwegian author Sigrid Undset’s 1920-22 medieval trilogy, Kristin Lavransdatter, writer-director Liv Ullmann’s film is a sumptuous romantic melodrama. A young woman pursues autonomy and self-determination, especially regarding her body and her heart’s desire. Lavrans, Kristin’s landowning father, has arranged her marriage to Simon; his own (initially loveless) marriage to Ragnfrid, Kristin’s mother, was similarly arranged. But Kristin’s heart belongs to Arne, whose spirit is broken by thus being denied the girl he loves despite his pleas she choose him instead. The tradition runs counter for two complementary reasons: the Church sees a parentally arranged marriage under its own watchful eye as a working-out of God’s design; ironically, doing the Church’s bidding in this regard conjures the illusion for parents of their control over things. Ullmann is expert at many things cinematic, but I am most grateful for her ability to clarify complex matters such as this.
     Lavrans has cause to feel outmanned by cosmos: he has lost all three of his sons (“It wasn’t even wartime,” he notes), and Kristin’s sister was crippled by a childhood accident caused by Kristin’s carelessness(?). Kristin is the repository of all the good man’s hopes. Later, he muses to her that, had he seen her unhappiness regarding Simon, he would have let her marry Arne; but duty grounded in guilt kept Kristin from showing her father her true feelings.
     Kristin falls in love with Erlend, another rival for Simon, and one saddled with another, newly pregnant mistress. (Erlend’s mother somewhat resembles Undset.) The film ends with Kristin’s marriage to Erlend and a load of guilt—I haven’t mentioned the half of it—as she looks out a window, presumably at an uncertain future.
     Sven Nykvist’s color cinematography, light and lyrical, is gorgeous.