It's Lorna's evolution (charted through Dobroshi's uncompromising performance) that makes "Lorna's Silence" worth seeing. But the Dardennes shouldn't have been so deliberately stingy with the details of her story.
Lorna's Silence (2009)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:82
Fresh:70
Rotten:12
Average Rating:7.2/10
Consensus: Subtle and emotionally bleak, this gripping thriller features the Dardenne brothers' recognizable penchant for realism and very strong performances.
Rated: R [See Full Rating] for brief sexuality/nudity, and language.
Runtime: 1 hr 45 mins
Genre: Foreign Films
Theatrical Release:Jul 31, 2009 Limited
Synopsis:
The destiny of a woman caught between love and the law of the underworld.
Lorna, (Arta Dobroshi), a young Albanian woman living in Belgium, has her sights set on opening a snack bar with her...
The destiny of a woman caught between love and the law of the underworld.
Lorna, (Arta Dobroshi), a young Albanian woman living in Belgium, has her sights set on opening a snack bar with her boyfriend, Sokol (Alban Ukaj). In order to do so, she becomes an accomplice in a diabolical plan devised by mobster Fabio (Fabrizio Rongione). Fabio has set up a false marriage between Lorna and Claudy (Jérémie Renier) allowing Lorna to get her Belgian citizenship. However, she is then asked to marry a Russian mafioso who's ready to pay hard cash to also get his hands on those vital Belgian identity papers. Fabio intends to kill Claudy in order to speed up the second marriage. But will Lorna remain silent?--© Sony Pictures Classics
Starring: Arta Dobroshi, Jérémie Rénier, Fabrizio Rongione, Alban Ukaj
Starring: Arta Dobroshi, Jérémie Rénier, Fabrizio Rongione, Alban Ukaj, Morgan Marinne, Olivier Gourmet, Anton Yakovlev, Grigori Manukov, Mireille Bailly, Stephanie Gob
Director: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
Director: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
Screenwriter: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
Producer: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Denis Freyd
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
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Reviews for Lorna's Silence
...less a character study than the apparent breaking-in of a camera crew on a sad and sordid life.
By scorning accessibility, the filmmakers unwittingly throw out the baby with the bathwater. After all, what's authentically human, if not high drama?
Mirthless and deliberately paced, there's still enough in the well-acted Lorna's Silence to make it worth listening to.
The Dardennes have once again captured the harsh reality of the modern underclass while also injecting a note of moral hopefulness into what might have been a bleak and heartless tale.
Money -- not love or family -- is the (literal) currency that motivates social behavior; human relationships are reduced to financial transactions.
A unique filmmaking style that resembles near-documentary realism. If you were not aware that this was a movie, you would think you were watching surveillance footage recorded by a sophisticated private investigation firm.
With a more linear plot and steadier camerawork than previous efforts, Lorna's Silence is among the Dardennes' more accessible films, despite a drawn-out finale that still doesn't quite satisfy.
In a just world, the Dardenne brothers would be as well known as the Coens; outside the United States they probably are already.
More entertaining on a base level than a Belgian film about poor people has any right to be.
As filmmakers, the Dardennes are more concerned with probing the causes of crime than in glamorizing it.
I could see what they were trying to do, but it was a little too artsy and didn't really work for me.
The Dardennes are adroit at dangling the carrot, withholding just enough of the story's particulars to keep you curious without testing your patience.
Lorna's Silence is an interesting and entertaining film that poses a more difficult moral dilemma than its authors might have intended.
In casting the previously unknown Dobroshi, the brothers approach greatness with their lean portrait of simple humanity tested by desire and driven desperate by circumstances.
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