Review: Lorna's Silence

Awarded Best Screenplay at Cannes 2008, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's Lorna's Silence is an arthouse drama that stretches another short story into a feature-length film, only not for the ADD crowd.  The performances are good, but a major plot twist is so contrived it diminishes the slow build to the conclusion.

Lorna (Arta Dobroshi) is an Albanian immigrant who just got her Belgian citizenship card and dreams of opening a snack shop with her lover, Sokol (Alban Ukaj). Lorna is willing to participate in passport schemes to make her dreams come true, to the point of marrying for papers of her own. She lives with Claudy (Jérémie Renier), a junkie, who sold his name for heroin money. Add in a taxi-driving gangster (Fabrizio Rongione) and a Russian looking for a passport of his own, and the plot gets convoluted quickly. 

Everyone in Lorna's Silence has plans, but everyone knows what happens to the best-laid plans. Lorna has a goal she intends to meet, but no one expected her to start caring for Claudy, even Lorna herself. While the rest of the conspirators consider Claudy disposable, Lorna genuinely wants him to kick his habit.  Lorna is quiet and almost callous, but cannot remain unmoved by Claudy. Her consequent decisions lead to an improbable plot twist where she transforms from comatose to expressive, hence the title. 

The slow simmer that builds in the first 90 minutes of the movie is lost when the plot takes a turn that doesn't jibe with the long-term plotting of the schemers. It just doesn't make sense.  If approached as purely a character study, focusing on Lorna, Lorna's Silence is a low-key portrait of a world where everyone is using each other as a means to an end, disrupted when someone compromises just a little to benefit another human being.

Lorna's Silence is playing in Austin at the Landmark Dobie and Regal Arbor.