Along with A Christmas Tale (which has already played) and Synechdoche, New York (which hasn’t), my most-anticipated title in competition at Cannes this year was the latest film from Belgian masters Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, The Silence of Lorna. Judging by the reviews so far, the film seems more galvanizing than their previous work. Let's join the debate, now in progress...
Taking the affirmative is Glenn Kenny, who writes: “Le Silence De Lorna… is their followup to the 2006 Palme d'Or winner L'Enfant, and while I doubt that the Cannes prize is gonna go to this film, I think it's every bit as nuanced, surprising, and deeply moving as that film… Lorna is an entirely accessible film, one that moviegoers who like a nice juicy tale ought not be scared of.”
On the other side of the argument is Andrew O’Hehir, who contends that “[Arta] Dobroshi gives a brave and affecting performance, but there's something mechanistic and even cruel about "Lorna's Silence," which is more like a thriller than any previous Dardenne film, and correspondingly a lot less plausible. Whatever moral points it's trying to make about the underside of European affluence are uncharacteristically murky.”
Stepping in for the rebuttal is the Independent’s Jonathan Romney, writing: “The sense of revelation may not be there as it was with Rosetta, however, and the jurors may well be looking for something bigger and more of a statement - and there’s no shortage of films like that in competition this year. But as a film that’s very much about the new Europe, and the street-level problems that rarely get covered in film, Lorna certainly commands attention.”
And what’s this? A negative review from Jeff Wells: “I was close to enraged by the actions of Arta Dobroshi's main character in La Silence de Lorna, which I saw this morning. Which means I felt strongly irked by the Dardenne brothers' screenplay. Which means, despite the feeling and focus that went into it, that I didn't care for the film. At all.”
Finally, leaving us on a positive note is Variety’s Justin Chang: “Few directors offer the patient viewer such consummate rewards as Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, longtime documakers whose uncompromising, beautifully observed studies of Belgium's urban poor (including Palme d'Or winners "Rosetta" and "L'Enfant") reveal a peerless talent for conjuring drama out of the mundane and wresting emotion from determinedly unsentimental material.”
What does it say about me that this debate makes me all the more excited for the film?
Other films playing today out of competition:
The Hollywood Reporter’s Peter Brunette on Tony Manero- “Not for the faint of heart, or for those who like their protagonists all warm and cuddly, this second feature of Chilean director Pablo Larrain, despite its various forms of crudeness, is vital and strangely arresting. Even better, its political critique of the Pinochet dictatorship is indirect and subtle, and thus all the more welcome and fresh.”
Variety’s Alissa Simon on Je veux voir- “What becomes a legend most? Surely not being a figurehead in a self-consciously arty pseudo docu-cum-road movie. Still, Catherine Deneuve’s iconic presence lends some commercial appeal to "I Want to See”… An uneasy mix of scripted scenario, improvisation and surprising reality, pic professes to want to show destruction wrought during Lebanon's 2006 summer war through the French star's eyes, but seems more concerned with capturing her image as she's trundled about.”
Finally, the most universally acclaimed today was Terence Davies’ long-awaited return to filmmaking, Of Time and the City. Time Out’s Geoff Andrew: “Watching the film, you realise that Britain has no other filmmaker to match Davies in terms of his purely cinematic sensibility. Fine as our other far-from-inconsiderable big names are, it’s hard to imagine any of them creating sheer filmic poetry as may be found here. Davies’s juxtapositions of music and image, especially, are consistently audacious, original and exhilarating, whether the compositions reflect and reinforce each other or whether they make more complex by way of superbly sharp irony.”
And for good measure, Time’s Mary Corliss: “a dreamy documentary of Davies' home town of Liverpool. Shots of working-class Liverpudlians from the '30s, '40s and '50s doing the wash, or playing with school-friends, or preparing dinner, offer a fascinating, poignant glimpse of the rhythm of ordinary life — so precious because it is so rarely seen in documentaries.”
Shaping up to be a pretty darn good Cannes after all, wouldn’t you say?