Kirpianuscus
Dramatic, realistic, proposing honest portrait of an age, generation, near reality. A film about parenthood. Bitter, cold, well made. And about the build of responsability. All - gived in wise manner. With admirable force. A father. His son. A decision. And the transformation. And the price of option.
John Flynn
"L'enfant" is a clever, well-made, nontrivial dramatic masterpiece that solely relies on ordinariness and aesthetic of the real life, which makes this captivating film look wonderful and horrifying at the same time. The dialogues are minimal, but the actions of the characters speak for themselves. The characters don't feel like characters at all. They feel like humans, which is the best compliment that you can give to a character. The real life feel is what makes this film work so great. Everything feels natural and believable, which is the strongest part of all Dardanne duo films. The ending is tragic and hopeful at the same time. The film couldn't ended on a better note. 10 out of 10.
tailing 2ideas
What a jerk! This is what I felt about Bruno, a small-time crook, when the movie started. Then slowly the story develops in such a way that he goes deeper and deeper into trouble. About halfway through the movie he doesn't, for a fraction of second, seem to regret about the things he commits.Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne's L'Infant silently speaks the vagaries of two lovers who belong to the marginalized section of the society that Hollywood does not speak of or for that Bollywood is so trying to forget.I never did see the helplessness of a victim or an underdog in him but his character grew and you would thoughtlessly empathise with Bruno. By the end, I rooted for him and somehow wished everything was undone.First thing he did was pretend to take his newborn for a walk in his pram and make up a plan to sell it off to some crooks. That plan went awry. Then Sonia (his girlfriend and the mother) gave him up to police. Then another plan with a juvenile friend to snatch bag from an old woman ended up with his friend being caught.Watching the movie was dizzily overwhelming and yet judging the characters in the story was like a foreign thing to me. Sonia played by Deborah Francois could look like Jennifer Lawrence if the latter acts better like the former. Jeremie Renier gets under the skin of Bruno. I cursed myself for not being able to watch it earlier.The reluctance of the directors to use sound and music in the movie actually pays off. There are many gems in the movie. Though the film moves at a slow pace, you can't somehow predict the next scene. You feel hopeless not being able to but you'll love it if you love unpredictable plots. Anyway, I've given away many spoilers. Maybe, you can! Rather a brilliant catch for me.
paul2001sw-1
Short, direct and poignant,'L'Infant' is the story of Bruno, an irredeemably feckless young man, who finds himself utterly out of his depth on becoming a father. Bruno's sense of irresponsibility is tragic, but so extreme as to be comic as well; yet he wins our sympathy because he is not innately wicked, and even acts in accordance with a certain moral code: it's just that this code is that of a child, and wholly insufficient for adult life. The film is shot in a sparse, documentary style, there's a little visual poetry in its depiction of the underbelly of urban Belgium, but in essence this is a well-acted, fresh and economical movie, without pretensions of any sort; but whose realism imparts power, particularly to a couple of understated, but truly horrific scenes that made me nervous in my seat.
AD
