For close to three decades, the Dardenne brothers (Jean-Pierre and Luc of Belgium) have made films often situated in the drab industrial squalor of bleak neighborhoods squeezed between expressways and metropolitan rail corridors in the city of Liege. Their two early films, “La Promesse” and “Rosetta,” describe an exploited, racially heterogeneous working class performing illegal and semi-legal forms of casual and unskilled labor. Despite the painful and oppressive lives most of their characters live, the Dardennes often affirm by their films’ conclusion, usually with little sentimentality, the power of human connection. Their work also maintains a rare consistency of style—social realism reigns throughout. Both films were deservingly highly acclaimed, with “Rosetta” winning top prize at the 1999 Cannes Festival.
In their new film, “Young Mothers,” the Dardenne brothers juggle four protagonists—a departure from their usual approach, which tends to stay with one character’s consciousness. Most of the teenage mothers—except the weepy, needy Jessica (Babette Verbeek)—have given birth, and two of them have been abandoned by their own mothers. “Young Mothers” is set in and around a maternity home in Liège where the skilled staff look after their charges, all teenagers, with tough-minded care and compassion—training them in diapering, cooking, and generally how to be a mother, though the young mothers are barely emotionally prepared to care for their infants. There are a few moments in the film when they help each other, but that is far from the norm. Jessica keeps following her mother around the city—the same mother who abandoned her at birth to pursue a freer, single life and romantic relationships. It was cold, rejecting behavior, and she left Jessica without much thought, inflicting a lifelong wound. In Jessica’s words, “Not even an animal would do what she did.” By the film’s conclusion, we see the mother’s steeliness melting slightly toward both the infant and Jessica.
Another of the mothers is Ariane (Janaina Halloy Fokan), a somber, clearsighted girl of 15 who has decided to have her newborn daughter adopted so she can have a better life. And she will not accede to her alcoholic, volatile mother’s desire for a second chance to share in helping raise the granddaughter.
A third is Perla (Lucie Laruelle) who wants to keep her infant son Noé—but mainly to hold on to the father, Robin (Günter Duret). Robin has just been released from juvenile detention and has no interest in being a father. Perla, a negligent mother who cannot cope, sustains her romantic fantasy longer than she should have. Her role model is her half-sister who has a job and family and tries to comfort and sustain her.
The fourth mother, Julie (Elsa Houben), is married, and they have a child named Mia and seem committed to each other. But they are recovering addicts, and Julie has a relapse. Still, at the end she seems recovered and visits a surrogate mother (her teacher) and they sing together.
It is not quite a happy ending, but it feels slightly schematic. The whole film is more schematic than most of the Dardennes’ oeuvre, and given that it has four major characters, we learn about their situations but not enough about who they are.
Still, the Dardennes have a true gift for conveying the quotidian and how marginal people cope with the exploitative and broken situations they face. In this film, the social institutions work well, but it doesn’t mean they can miraculously make their lives whole.
