It’s been 30 years since Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes traded social realist documentary filmmaking for narrative fiction. Active since the 1970s, the Belgian brothers are now well into their seventies, having built up an impressive body of work, largely from intensely naturalistic stories of the poor and dispossessed. Their closest British analogue would be Ken Loach, but it isn’t too much of a stretch to say the rawness and compassion of their narratives, often populated by non-professional actors, can make Mike Leigh look like Michael Bay.
With the brothers’ latest – their thirteenth feature and first ensemble piece – the two-time Palme d’Or winners bring their tried-and-true methodology to a diverse quintet of teenagers temporarily housed in a residential shelter for young mothers in the directors’ native city of Liège.
We cannot help but root for every one of their characters, even when they inevitably fuck up.
Ariane (Janaina Halloy Fokan) has resolved to place her newborn with a well-off foster family, against the wishes of her own troubled mother, who wants the baby for herself. Perla (Lucie Laruelle), like the hapless Bruno in the Dardennes’ breakthrough film The Child (2005), is not ready for the responsibility parenthood brings, and no wonder – she is, after all, ‘a kid with a kid’. Pregnant Jessica (Babette Verbeek), desperate to reconnect with the parent who abandoned her, recalls Cyril in 2011’s The Kid with a Bike. Hairdressing apprentice Julie (Elsa Houben) dreams of moving with her baby’s young father into their own home, but struggles to resist the heroin addiction her boyfriend has managed to kick. Naima (Samia Hilmi), meanwhile, proves that positive outcomes are possible, as she prepares to leave the shelter for a job on the railways she loves.
Winner of the Best Screenplay prize at Cannes, Young Mothers brings nothing new to the Dardennes’ canon, but there’s comfort in the familiarity of their methodology. They’ve always had a knack for coaxing tremendous performances from even the youngest of actors, and the cast here is uniformly excellent.
As always, the Dardennes paint with a bleak brush, yet invariably succeed in finding light in the darkness, their empathy for those from the lowest rungs of society ultimately shining through. It’s a testament to their compassionate lens that we cannot help but root for every one of their characters, even when they inevitably fuck up.
In UK cinemas Friday, Aug 29