Meet Lorna. One of the most contemptible characters ever committed to celluloid.
This blank-faced beauty is the lead character in the latest cinematic offering from the Palme d'Or-winning brothers known as the Dardennes. The film's title is Lorna's Silence.
Before my rant kicks in, I should note that this is the first film in their oeuvre that I've seen. I've been told that that lack of context may play a role in my strong negative reaction to this film -- a reaction so strong and so negative that it caused me to play the misogyny card, my friends and compatriots.
Before I go any further, please be forewarned that this is another film rant on my part and it's bulging with ***SPOILERS***! So be alerted and what not.
I've also excerpted some quotes from The A.V. Club interview with the writers/directors.
And one more duty to perform before frothing at the mouth: Dictionary.com tells me misogyny is the "hatred, dislike, or mistrust of women." That's a pretty good range of emotions encapsulated in one explosion-inducing word. I think most people understand that the definition includes hatred, but some may not realize that the milder forms of "dislike" and "mistrust" qualify.
CUE THE RANT PROPER!
1. WHY LORNA'S SILENCE BORED ME:
For the 40 minutes or so of the film, I had difficulty connecting emotionally with this film's characters due to the performance choices the two lead actors made/were guided to make. I found Arta Dobroshi's turn as Lorna to be damagingly drained of emotion (outside of a few abrupt and exceedingly fleeting outbursts of anger, sadness and joy). Jérémie Renier as Claudy was distractingly weak in the role. Oy.
As far as the action and storyline, I don't think that that many telegraphs have been sent to an audience since the heyday of Western Union. Needless to say, boredom soon kicked in. By the 1 hr., 10 min. mark, I was longing to exit this film to re-watch the amazing Revanche (seek it out!) -- another film-noirish offering released this year that is far superior to Lorna's Silence in every possible way.
2. WHY LORNA'S SILENCE ANNOYED ME:
My boredom soon turned to aggravation when I realized that Lorna was one of the most despicable characters I'd ever been asked to sympathize with in a film. She is at turns amoral, icy, petulant, dumb, irrational, impetuous and greedy. As the capper, she devolves into unmitigated batshit crazy. What a ride!
Before the howls begin, I realize that *most people who have seen this film* are able to find a kindness at the heart of her character. Me? Hell to the no. I define her fleeting acts of compassion in the film as being consistently reluctant actions motivated by a craving for expediency in meeting her own goals or wanting to relieve her nagging guilt rather than anything truly sincere or heartfelt or humane.
3. ALLOW ME TO ELABORATE ON THE AMORAL POINT:
C'mon, guys. This is a woman who enters into a deal with the Russian mafia to falsely marry a junkie who she knows will be killed before the divorce he's been promised as a second payday. She makes this horrifying decision in order to gain citizenship by marriage and to earn relatively quick money, so that she can be with her boyfriend and open her dream snack shop with him. Well, what gal wouldn't be willing to let a drug addict get iced so she can serve speculoos to shopgirls?
Sure, Lorna has a crappy dry cleaners job and was living in a tiny box of a sublet before entering into this deal with the devil, but there are a lot of people with crappy jobs in tiny boxes of apartments who would never dream of colluding in a homicide. That the intended victim is a junkie whose life could easily be lost to drugs anyway should offer no clemency to this woman.
YES, YES. I KNOW! These are the kinds of moral dilemmas that the Dardennes like to explore in their work, along with the perceived value of human life. Great dramatic fodder, no doubt. I JUST WANT TO POINT OUT THAT THIS ACT AUTOMATICALLY QUALIFIES HER AS WORTHY OF DISLIKE, MISTRUST AND, IN MY CASE, HATRED! OK. So now *I'm* the misogynist. Fine. But let's move on.
4. ON THE PETULANT TIP:
Lorna is at her best -- outside of the happy bike chase with the drug bloke that lasts all of 60 seconds -- when she interacts with her boyfriend. Yet even with her man, her moments of pleasure are fleeting. She pouts habitually when he won't give her the right kind of attention at the right moment.
5. ON THE IRRATIONAL/IMPETUOUS/DUMB TIP:
Sure, Lorna tries doggedly to save the junkie by trumping up spousal abuse charges in order to gain a divorce. She even tries to reason with the mafia via her cabbie contact, Fabio, to stop the junkie's murder. BUT WHO TRIES TO REASON WITH THE MAFIA? SOON-TO-BE DEAD PEOPLE. AND CHARACTERS IN FILMS THAT NEED DRAMATIC CONFLICT, SURE. I'm just saying that it made me lose even more interest in her as an anti-heroine when she continued to act without considering any consequences.
Moving on, once again. After trying to bully the gentle junkie into hurting her, she even inflicts injuries on herself (irrational, impetuous, dumb) to create evidence to get the divorce. I know some will argue that these desperate acts are born out of a sense of caring for the junkie whose life she wants to save -- but it's ultimately all about what Lorna wants and needs. She wants the junkie alive, because she doesn't want to be an accomplice in his death. And, sure, she offers to help him stay clean after they get the divorce, but there is a franticness in her offer. The chick wants what she wants -- why won't this drug-addled idiot give it to her?!
The scene that could most easily be pointed to as representing Lorna's walls coming down is when she locks herself in the apartment with the junkie and strips naked in order to distract him from a drug buy by having sex with him. Surely this shows her at her most vulnerable and humane? I agree, it shows vulnerability -- yet still at play is the impetuosity, the irrationality (a one-night stand is supposed to cure a junkie?), stupidity (unprotected sex with someone who shoots heroin?). And there is no affection shown her on her part. It's a desperate animal act -- manic and misplaced.
Sure, when the junkie is killed, Lorna buys him a nice shirt for the funeral and tries to return his money to his mother. Again, this felt like a way to excise her guilt for being a jerk to him while he was alive, not to honor his memory or the junkie's mother. Oh, sure, her heart had softened towards him postcoitally, but that's a small comfort given the big picture.
And guess who snatches the one-thousand Euros she originally refused from Fabio for her extra "work" in getting the junkie clean? Our little Lorna. She then uses that money to get a loan on the snack shop space. Yes, folks, she enters this expensive arrangement before the second fake marriage vows have been spoken and before the divorce that will give her her final payday (now serving: more irrationality, impetuousity and stupidity). The woman's got no head for business, I tell ya!
6. YAY! WE'VE FINALLY REACHED CRAZY!
After signing the lease, Lorna becomes overcome by the belief that she is pregnant with the junkie's child. She considers an abortion, then flees the doctor's office before her exam can be conducted, but only after clutching the doc in a bizarre clench resembling a hug and bursting into gasping tears.
She later tries to put money in an account for her baby under the junkie's last name, but the teller says she can't open an account until the baby is born. She argues the point angrily until she finally agrees the money can wait in her account until her water breaks. So hard to reason with this woman!
She tells Fabio she's pregnant, then she asks her future fake husband if he'd be willing to deal with a baby. When the future husband says no and Fabio becomes impatient, she backs down. Oh, dear. So now Fabio no longer trusts her (would you?) and decides to have one of his henchmen introduce her to her maker. I have to admit, at this point in the film, I was kinda looking forward to having her character "silenced" because she had become like a festering boil in my movie world. Now *that's* misogyny for ya, but the Dardennes drove me there!
Lorna realizes she's about to get iced, tears well and she makes an excuse that she needs to pee in order to get out of the car. For the first time in the film, I'm able to relate to her -- I needed to urinate, too.
On the way out of the car, she tries to grab her purse. The henchman knows better and snags it back. She talks to herself and her imaginary fetus as she relieves herself, cleverly (for once!) grabbing a rock from the ferns at her feet. She then knocks the driver out with the rock with remarkable precision and runs like the wind, leaving escape-enhancing devices like his car, his car keys and her purse behind. Mkay. I should give her a break here, right? She's freaking out about her impending doom -- not thinking clearly. A girl can make mistakes ad nauseum throughout a two-hour running time. Fine. Whatever. I just want this misery over.
So she's running. Running through the woods to get away. I've read in two different spots now that this portion of the film can be interpreted as either being inside Lorna's fantasy or a bit of magical realism. Again, whatever. She finds a safehouse in the woods and builds a fire for herself and her ghost baby. A fire that -- if not in magical realism world -- would not only send out smoke that would help her pursuers track her, but would probably fill the room with carbon monoxide and suffocate her.
But back to crazy. During her desperate escape and firewood gathering, she speaks to her imaginary unborn baby with the royal "we." She tells the child she will protect it, since she let its father down. Again, this struck me as motivated by guilt for the blood on her hands -- to relieve her own discomfort.
7. THE FALLOUT
When I left the theater, I was angry for all the reasons I mention above. About 30 minutes later, I realized that there was more to my ire than mere quibbles with a disappointing melodrama. I was angry because while Lorna endured misogynistic treatment from certain male characters in the film, ultimately the film qualifies as misogynistic in itself. Most pointedly in the "end" she meets. After all, isn't making her character crazy-go-nuts the best punishment for such an amoral, icy, petulant, irrational, impetuous, dumb, greedy woman who won't play by the rules? Way better than just popping a cap in her ass or letting her escape by her suddenly located wits. Now she can stew in her own nutty juices, inhaling punitive smoke as she lies prostrate, pitiful, with her junkie baby dream, in those wacky red jeans. It's kind of a long-held tradition in misogyny, isn't it? The psycho bitch who gets what she deserves? Yeah, just super.
Now here's the rub -- I seem to be the only one who has had this reaction to this film. I am surprised by that fact since the details described above seem wholly damning to me. I assume others found her character sympathetic, compassionate, relatable -- a victim of circumstances. Maybe even Madonna-esque (the Biblical one, not Guy's ex). Egads.
OK, so now to face more possible fury for using the "M" word here. Let's ask the natural series of questions:
If Lorna was Loren and the story played out in the exact same way (um, minus the pregnancy), wouldn't he just be an unappealing character vs. an example of misogyny? To a point, yes, but there are vital details to Lorna's tale that makes the "M" word fitting. The particulars of Lorna's story -- the marriages of convenience, the intimidation factor by the tough guys she makes her partners, the faked domestic violence, the hysterical pregnancy and thoughts of abortion, even the "mercy sex" with the junkie -- these are all dramatic themes heightened by the protaganist being a woman, of course. But it's more than having a uterus that's at play here. These themes go to the heart of feminine wiles, power and vulnerabilities.
A quote from Luc Dardenne in reply to The A.V. Club's question of what inspired this film:
"It began, I think, with the desire to film a woman. We didn’t really know who, where, how, but it was the idea of a woman."
Luc again:
"Because we thought we needed to watch this woman, to observe, and not to mimic her movements with the camera, as we did in Rosetta. That requires a little bit of distance, and a more fixed position, to observe this mysterious woman, who has a skull with many compartments: She tells the truth to one, not to another. She takes part in many tableaux to arrive at this ending. So we watch her, sometimes with compassion, sometimes with hatred, sometimes with comprehension. We watch her. And we are always asking ourselves who she is."
Sometimes with hatred? I would say *mostly* with hatred, beloved Belgian dudes -- even if it is subtle, shuffling at the edges, disguised by a lingering camera lens of intermittent compassion/comprehension. At least that's the gut reaction it drew out of me. And I don't need Gloria Allred standing by my side to know my reaction has merit. I stand by my side.
PLEASE KNOW THIS: I'M NOT ACCUSING THE DARDENNES OF BEING MISOGYNISTS EITHER AS INDIVIUALS OR ARTISTS. And I freely admit that a film can contain misogyny and not be misogynistic in itself, BUT I do find this film of theirs to be very much misogynistic in the brutal way they've chosen to portray their character as storytellers. Once again, I know the brothers trade in brutal tales. Point taken.
Ultimately, the only comfort I can find in my opinion is that this film will serve to illuminate the ugliness it reveals and by illuminating it, may inspire something to curtail it. Let's hope so, because it's just a goddamn boring film otherwise. Insert smiley face emoticon here!
30 comments:
There's one thing in my experience of certain French films that is very similar to this, which is that the women are so freaking completely irrational in every possible way. I can't think of anyone off the top of my head except 'A Heart in Winter.'
But I've seen the thing before--what you seem to be talking about. The character's actions make NO sense, assuming that they are a fully realized human being. Then you gotta be--wait, I get why this person is self-absorbed, vapid, nuts, irrational--she's A WOMAN. I think you are required to conclude this first--and then everything else makes sense. But French realism so often doesn't make sense.
Anyway, Simone De Beauvoir is the only antidote. The Second Sex remains astoundingly true in some respects about the U.S. even now but really, I think I get Simone De B way better from watching French films. You understand more what she was up against.
(THIS COMMENT IS ALSO SPOILERIFIC.)
Well, this is just as off-base as I'd anticipated.
It's fine that you didn't like the movie. I think it's terrific, but it's your right to bored, annoyed, and any number of other negative emotions, just as I was mostly bored and annoyed by, say, your beloved Synecdoche, New York.
However, the vast majority of your argument about the film's misogyny is simply based on the fact that Lorna is an unlikeable character who does reprehensible things. We can have a legitimate debate about just how horrible a person she is, but even if she's worse than freakin' Hitler, that does not in any way constitute misogyny. In order to make that claim, you'd have to make the case that had this character been a man, he would have been portrayed in a radically different manner. And there's zero basis for that assertion. Granted, you haven't seen any of the Dardennes' other films, but had you seen, for example, L'Enfant, you'd know that these filmmakers are perfectly willing to show male protagonists behaving equally badly (and then, like Lorna, attempting to atone).
Basically you just spend umpteen paragraphs listing all the reasons you despised this character—which, again, is a legitimate response so far as simply disliking the film is concerned—and then at the end you conclude that the film itself is misogynist because some of the particular things Lorna does are female-specific, e.g. a man can't experience pseudocyesis. Sorry, but that's just nutty. In fact it's pretty much exactly the same kind of nutty as Andrea Dworkin's belief that all intercourse is rape because it involves the male penetrating the female (whether consensually or not; in her mind it's still an invasion and that's dictated by anatomy). There are differences between men and women; some of those differences (particularly those involving pregnancy and childbirth) create potential dramatic situations that apply solely to women (unless it's Billy Crystal); and the fact that a filmmaker employs such situations in the story of a female character you find despicable does not entail misogyny. Nor does Luc Dardenne's statement that he and his brother started out wanting to make a film about a woman, or that they sometimes viewed their protagonist with hatred. In other films they start out wanting to make a film about a man and they sometimes view him with hatred. Nothing about their treatment of Lorna can possibly be enlarged to encompass Woman herself, and that's reflected in this rant, which (as I predicted) makes a strong case for why you think this movie sucks but utterly fails to demonstrate that the film as a whole hates, dislikes or even mistrusts women as a gender.
Oh, and on the ending as somehow punishing her: Would you also say—I don't know if you've seen this film, but hopefully you have—that Terry Gilliam is punishing Sam Lowry at the end of Brazil? The mere fact that a character goes mad does not automatically constitute contempt on the part of the filmmaker(s), and I submit that it only seems that way to you in this instance because your own personal opinion of Lorna is so overpoweringly negative. That nobody else has interpreted this ending as "punishment" for that "crazy bitch" ought to be giving you pause.
I respect and value your opinion on matters cinematic and other, as you know, but you're out to lunch on this particular issue.
The first thing I'd say to "MD'A" is that "misogynist" is a noun. You could say, "...the film itself is A misogynist" or "...the film itself is misogynistic," but "...the film itself is misogynist" totally closes my mind to the rest of what you're saying because the phrase doesn't qualify as English. And, plus, it aggravates the hell out of me.
And to the crazy bitch who runs this website, all I can say is: your review perfectly demonstrates the reason that women should not be allowed to write film reviews--or even watch films at all, for that matter. (And now I suppose you'll try to pin the "misogyny" label on this comment...? What sad little people you are. Women, I mean.)
I didn't like it either, but it sure isn't misogynist. That just misses the point. For me, it lacks everything that made L'Enfant so incredible (that film's efficiency in storytelling, whereas this one says only a little with a lot of plot) and veers towards everything that made The Son such a piece of shit.
The Dardennes have been all over the map. Brilliant (L'Enfant), Pretty good (La Promesse, Rosetta), awful (The Son), and now mixed & disappointing. It's weird how they keep making almost the same film and to such varying degrees of success or failure.
"In order to make that claim, you'd have to make the case that had this character been a man, he would have been portrayed in a radically different manner."
Had the character been a man, she'd have called it misanthropic; there is no strictly male equivalent to misogeny (that we all know of), so all of us are at a disadvantage when we encounter it. To Alejandro, who's working things out here, I jest and offer: ''subject'' generally refers in existentialism to a person who exercises freedom of choice, whereas Parshley understood ''subjective'' in its everyday English sense to mean ''personal'' or ''not objective.'' http://tinyurl.com/m4wr3l -- that's for you too, ozma.
And Private Joker, re the efficiency in "L'enfant," don't you think that had to do with them shooting oners all the time? They practiced and practiced ... will dig it out the story later if you want.
ballywick
I don't even think you need to have seen, say, THE CHILD, to realize that playing the sex card is silly.
There are plenty of despicable men in *this* movie. In other words, why do we hear so much here about Lorna's despicableness (and thus the film's misogyny), but not about the despicableness of the Mafia guys who *hatch* the plan, who *actually* "kill" Claudy, who *also* plan to kill Lorna, etc., which makes them even more despicable (and thus on the very logic presented here, the film's misandry).
"I define her fleeting acts of compassion in the film as being consistently reluctant actions motivated by a craving for expediency in meeting her own goals or wanting to relieve her nagging guilt rather than anything truly sincere or heartfelt or humane."
The whole middle part of the movie is just "fleeting"? I'm sorry .... the whole dynamic for about 25-30 minutes is a push-pull between the deal she made and her sorta growing affection for Claudy, which results in her trying to get out from under the worst consequences of that deal. One can scream in all-caps about "WHO TRIES TO REASON WITH THE MAFIA?" but there's a very simple answer ... those already under the influence of the Mafia, for whatever reason. And what else can such a person do?
Curious ... what would a non-misogynist movie do with a female protagonist *who already is in this situation*? OK ... she shouldn't have made the deal in the first place, sure (note that this happens before the movie begins, so it obviously isn't the Dardennes' concern). But that's a different matter. What Do You Do *Now*? You can say she should just get out, but to go where ... remember the objective situation of her legal status in Belgium.
Rather, Lorna does exactly what most people do if they have a conscience but are engaged in a structure of sin, even ones of their own making. They try to get out from under some of it and the consequences for others without catastrophe befalling oneself. It's equivalent to Faustian negotiating with the devil (or some plausible devil-figure, like we have here). And it's just vulgar to reduce this realistic portrayal of human reaction to sin, especially one's own, to "ultimately all about what Lorna wants and needs."
Thanks for all the terrific comments, people. My day job prohibits me for responding promptly, but I will.
That you hate, mistrust or dislike a woman --even profoundly so-- does not qualify you as a misogynist.
A misogynist would hate, mistrust or dislike a woman he just met, whom he knows nothing about, simply because she's female.
And yes, Alejandro Adams has it right in that it's a slog for men to argue with women against this sort of scattershot abuse of that term without themselves automatically sounding like defensive, patronizing misogynists.
There needs to be a word that means "mistrust, dislike or hatred for throwaway accusations of 'misogyny'"
Also, I think you need to be careful that you're not falling into the trap Professor Carney discusses here:
Ray Carney: ...sociology and sociological ways of thinking have taken over and replaced aesthetic or truth-telling modes. Whether it's feminist or political thought, or sociological analysis in that multicult[ural] way, or whether it's some other form of ideological dissection of the work, that is the only mode of discourse that's approved.
MH: I'm reminded of a bell hooks piece on the movie Kids, where just because a group of kids brutally beats a black kid, she claims the film was racist. She assumes that the audience is identifying with the kids beating up this boy. But the film doesn't say that!
Ray Carney: Well, I haven't read the piece, and I found the film somewhat bland, but it sounds like her piece is this type of criticism. They collapse the film back into the world. I remember in the novel Tom Jones a scene where Hamlet's ghost appears on stage, and a stupid, uninformed character in the audience goes running out because he's afraid of ghosts. Well, they're afraid of ghosts to the core. They confuse the film with the world and fold it back into the world, talking about, for example, racial problems in the world or racial treatment of characters as if it were life.
MH: A feminist critic once stood up at the end of a screening of Barbara Loden's Wanda, saying the film had failed because it didn't provide solutions to the main character's dilemma.
Ray Carney: At another university I was approached for a women's film festival, and the female students made the mistake of coming to me to advise them on programming films. This was several years ago. It was some kind of tenth anniversary, with posters and speeches, and for the film festival I programmed Swing Time, the Fred Astaire—Ginger Rogers musical, Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot, Cassavetes' Woman Under the Influence, Barbara Loden's Wanda and two or three other minor master works that I loved. Of course, after several of them had played, they found Swing Time as offensive as Wanda, but for different reasons. They realized they had gotten the wrong programmer and they would never make that mistake again. They took my word for it.
MH: What was offensive?
Ray Carney: They have no understanding of stylization. In Swing Time, the [offended] students will take Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire and act like they met them on the street. And if she's in love with him or Fred wins her love, they say, "what a dumb babe, what a hooker, what a playmate of the month." Well, Swing Time or Follow the Fleet, or The Gay Divorcee or any of those MGM musicals with Fred and Ginger, one way of understanding them is that they are not even about characters; they are about states of feeling. They are musicals, for God's sake! They are forms of expression, like opera. It would be like going to La Boheme and trying to study tuberculosis, or seeing it as a history of Paris in the 19th century, or how to burn wood stoves. You don't go to Monet to study the flowers for botanical reasons. You don't go study John Singer Sargent to learn about fashions. You go for emotional and intellectual experiences that rock your boat in certain ways or educate you in certain ways. Yes, Swing Time is as unreal as an opera or a ballet is unreal, but they were taking it as if [Fred and Ginger] were people they had just met at lunch. Now, Wanda is not unreal in that way, but it doesn't give them a Jane Fonda character to provide easy answers. They wanted television and I gave them art.
http://www.organicanews.com/news/article.cfm?story_id=190
Re Alejandro: "misogynist" is both noun and adjective, the latter meaning "reflecting or inspired by a hatred of women : a misogynist attitude." Which, indeed, means that misogynist and misogynistic are interchangeable.
Re the debate: I'm on the not-misogynist side, mostly because like Mike mentioned, L
enfant presents Jeremie Renier's character as an equally stupid/thoughtless character who tries to atone after doing dumb, irrevocable shit, and I wouldn't say the Dardennes are misanthropes because of it.
Misogyny = hatred of women
Misanthropy = hatred of humans
Misandry = hatred of men
Guido, my comment was a bifurcated limits-of-language joke. There wasn't anything remotely sincere or accurate about it. Except the part where I use "aggravate" in a way which aggravates MD'A.
I'm reduced to taunting because I haven't seen the film and because I'm irremediably childish.
I should say something "real" now, so how about this poem:
Rosetta is perfect
The Son blows my mind
The Child is watchable
La Promesse falls way behind
Stress patterns in last two lines don't work and the last line is two syllables too long. Try this instead:
Rosetta is perfect
The Son blows my mind
L'Enfant, c'est watchable
Promesse — way behind
Misandry is derived from misanthropy.
Etymology: mis- (as in misanthropy) + andr- + 2-y
Date: circa 1909
: a hatred of men
There is no corollary to misogyny in linguistics; that's why The Second Sex was written and unfortunately mis-interpreted through bad translation, where it remains misunderstood today by English speaking people.
If the Dardennes didn't give Lorna the same level of preparation they gave a man's story in L'Enfant, I'm going to err in favor of Nictate; because the subject is too easy to dismiss on the grounds of it being a realistic portrayal or that she just didn't like the protagonist. The only thing "throw (or thrown) away" here is seeing misogyny rigidly defined as needing to rise to some critical level and banning small turns of it as not something that makes something else suck.
ballywick
Alejandro,
You're a royal bastard for making me think I could correct a successful filmmaker, and mediocre poet.
Vincent,
I didn't know the word for hatred of men, so I used misanthrope implying that most men would probably hate humans before they hated only men. This is likely flawed but I simply wasn't going searching for the word "misandry," so thank you for doing the work for me and teaching me something new.
And by Vince I meant Victor, naturally.
Guido Stern = Mike (Maguire), because there's enough confusion in here already. Honestly, I think the boring factor comes from how it was made (I read the A.V.Club interview)...
b.w. (you know by now)
Ballywick, your IQ must exceed mine by a factor of seventyjillions. I can't make out a single thing you've written in any of your comments.
I love that I can come to the comments section of Nictate's blog to get my Ray Carney interview fix. I've been tickled by that all day. Nictate's blog comments pop-up window: the smoke-filled room in which the cinerati convene.
Oh, hello.
I've finally had time to reply to one of y'all. Since MD'A was the first to post an argumentative comment, I answered his complaints first. It took me so long to compose and so many characters to express what I wanted to say, my rebuttal won't fit in one comment box. Thus, I've made it it's own blot post (link below).
I'll respond to the rest of the critical comments above as soon as I can.
Thanks for being a part of this heated discussion, guys.
Here is link (or you can just go to my blog home page): http://nictate.blogspot.com/2009/08/rebuttal-numero-una-mda.html
You do know what you're talking about Nictate, you just felt it like a full body blow. A. O. Scott said Lorna's Silence "was singled out last year for its screenplay, which is very good but which is also perhaps too much in evidence. Every fictional character, of course, is controlled by an external force, but in this case the reversals and surprises in the narrative undermine our crucial sense of Lorna’s autonomy, and of her solitude."
Try L'Enfant and let your camera eye take over; I recall having serial camera orgasms and feeling peaceful w/the story & characters.
Gemko's live tweeting reveals a serious soft spot for this character's story. Everyone's entitled.
I still haven't dug up the NYT story about The Dardennes' preparation for L'Enfant.
b.w.
Hm. I wonder if anyone's still paying attention to this thread.
Basically, I agree with D'Angelo that your misogyny claim is hooey but I agree with you in that the film doesn't quite work for me. Diplomatic!
The sex scene was laughably implausible. I wouldn't care about things like plausibility if this were a straight-up thriller or noir or whatevs, but for a Serious Drama With Serious Themes the various twists and turns of the plot mostly registered as illogical and took me out of the film.
And the pregnancy delusion...all I can say is WTF. My best guess of what this is *supposed* to mean is that the delusion was Lorna's way of subconsciously extricating herself from her bad situation. But the character was too much of a blank slate -- and the film's storytelling was too sloppy, at least toward the end -- for that to come off. (Evidence of said sloppiness: Why exactly did the deal with the Russian go south? Did he find out her pregnancy was a lie and wanted to rid himself of a crazy woman? Did Fabio call it off because he knew she was crazy? Did the boyfriend know that Lorna was likely to be whacked? I didn't even get that a whacking was about to take place -- I interpreted that as paranoia on crazy Lorna's part.)
I actually was quite into this film for much of its duration. I was not bored. I was always curious to see where it was going, and I did feel that the junkie's death was handled effectively (cutting straight from the sex scene to Lorna shopping for burial clothes). But the Dardennes end up choking on all that (admittedly compelling) plot.
The previous Dardenne films I've seen -- Rosetta and The Son -- were less involving, but made more sense and worked better. I'm gonna see L'Enfant soon, which hopefully will strike a balance.
On second thought, want to retract my statement about your misogyny argument being "hooey" - that is the kind of knee-jerk response that I try to avoid. And actually, reading more of the comments, I disagree with MDA on a key point: I think it's perfectly reasonable to argue that a work of art contains certain qualities (such as misogyny) without ascribing those qualities to the work's author. In this case, I happen to think Lorna is more underwritten and muddily acted than misogynistic. But I don't mean to dismiss your well-reasoned argument.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Brian. Great points you made. Nice job being diplomatic, as well!
As far as I can remember, you're the first person in this thread to comment on the sex scene. I'd wondered why everyone else left it untouched in the discussion and I suspect it was for the reason you mentioned -- it was so implausible, it's not even worth examining.
It seems that even enthusiastic fans of the film see the ending as a whiff.
I agree, the way they handled the junkie's death was nicely done. That little "oh" moment when you realize why she's been going through his clothes and buying the new shirt.
I have L'Enfant at home now and am looking forward to figuring these Dardennes dudes out.
Another point about the ending. I recently watched "The Son" as preparation, and without spoiling anything, the final shot of that film is perfect. The final shot of "Lorna" is just another bit of calculated arthouse ambiguity, hitting the audience over the head with its proud open-endedness. In contrast, "The Son's" ending displays mastery of what I like to call the Pointedly Abrupt Ending. It's not telegraphed, it's not emphatic; it's abrupt, but the fade to black comes at the perfect moment. This ending was pretty much the opposite of that.
P.S. to Brian:
I forgot to mention that I *totally* agree with your point about Lorna being too much of a blank slate. That aspect of the film drove me batty.
Was just reading a review of the film on metroactive.com (I think Ballywick posted the link somewhere in this thread originally), but this quote about the ending rings really true for me:
"But the film teeters into behavior we have to take on faith because it's absurd: a sudden sacrifice, a sudden conversion to belief in the sanctity of all life (even unborn life). It's a sharp turn this movie can't quite execute, and it means that for the first time the Dardennes can be accused of melodrama."
From:
http://www.metroactive.com/metro/08.05.09/film-lorna-0931.html
Melodrama is right. While I'm not inherently opposed to melodrama by any means, the Dardennes are just about the last filmmakers on Earth who ought to be tackling it.
Also, definitely check out Matt Zoller Seitz's review of the film if you haven't. He didn't like it, and he raises some of the same objections that you and I have. Link: http://www.ifc.com/news/2009/07/standing-witness.php?page=3
P.P.S. to Brian:
Thanks for the retraction of your "hooey" statement. I took it in stride on first read, but appreciate you wanting to avoid knee-jerkiness. Nice! And thanks for the "well-reasoned argument" compliment. Very appreciated.
I've come to accept the fact that I'm probably the only person on the planet who will ever use the M word to describe this film and I'm OK with that. I take some odd pride in being the lone voice crying in the wilderness.
I'm glad you agree it's reasonable to argue that a work of art contains qualities without ascribing same to the creator.
I'm with you on "underwritten and muddily acted." Something tells me both of those characteristics were the intention of the Dardennes, since from what I understand they are appreciated for what they leave out as much as for what they include in their films.
Do you have a blog or write online elsewhere? If not, you should. If you do, please share the link with me.
Wow. Thanks for the Matt Zoller Seitz review link, Brian. That was the most in line with my sentiments of anything I've read. Very refreshing and reassuring.
Amen to all of these MZS comments:
"... the film is a mess: lumpy and unfocused, imprecisely acted and populated by characters that aren’t so much opaque and contradictory as inconsistent, forever saying and doing whatever the script needs them to say or do."
MZS's comment above really underlines my point that so much of the film felt telegraphed. It's bizarre to me that this screenplay won at Cannes.
"I guess what’s intended is a thawing-iceberg character study, a film about an ethically and morally numb woman who rediscovers her decency by caring for a sweet loser who won’t accept her “This bitch is an island” routine and drags her into situations where she has no choice but to help him (and in the process, bond with him)."
"As a result, I couldn’t buy Lorna’s semi-redemptive transformation even as a movie conceit."
Yes, yes, and yes.
fine moving on
Bathmate
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