Lorna's Silence

City Paper Grade: A

by Cindy Fuchs

[City Paper Grade: A]

Lorna lies in her bed, lights out, the camera close. She's awake, and she's annoyed when she hears Claudy (Jérémie Renier) at the door. The frame keeps still on Lorna (Arta Dobroshi) as she tosses, turning her back to the camera. "I want to talk," he pleads quietly, unseen. "Let me in." She refuses. He persists. "I can stick it out this time if you help me." She sits up in bed and the frame follows, her face barely outlined in the dark. "Let me sleep, Claudy!" He doesn't answer, and she lies back, face down.

It's a seemingly simple moment, revealing tension and frustration, vulnerability and limits. The scene — and others in Lorna's Silence, as well as the previous films by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (including two Palme d'Or winners) — reveals emotional complexities in images at once gorgeously impressionistic and devastatingly concrete, a mix reflected in both composition and story.

As indicated by her daily tasks (undertaken with the camera in tow, as if only observing), Lorna sees herself as practical: She works in a dry cleaning store, keeps in touch with her boyfriend, Sokol (Alban Ukaj), by nightly phone calls and agrees, despite herself, to help heroin addict Claudy get clean. Claudy's desperation and eagerness to please Lorna are a source of discomfort for her but also a possibility for another sort of life, with a partner who cares for her, almost too deeply. He's married the Albanian-born Lorna so that she might get her Belgian citizenship. They share a small apartment in Liège, where she touches base with Fabio (Fabrizio Rongione), the small-time gangster who arranged the marriage and, as we learn early, Claudy's murder in order to free up Lorna to marry a more lucrative client.

As thorny as these relationships may be, Lorna (and Dobroshi's superb performance) centers the film, appearing serene but writhing inside. Unlike the men around her, she feels what's wrong in their shady business, and when she sees that felling mirrored back to her in Claudy's scrawny, needy and also weirdly generous form, she has to make choices she hasn't anticipated. Even as the camera follows her, it never quite keeps up, though it's unclear whether she's eluding your interpretation or her own.