L'Enfant (2005)

"L'Enfant" is the proof that many movies gain acknowledgement, awards and are considered very good due to their social importance, the tackling of critical issues, and not really by their cinematic quality. "L'enfant" is a good movie, no doubt, but from that to be worthy of winning the Palm D'Or in 2005 goes, in my opinion, a long long way. I had never seen a movie before of French brothers Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, nor I was familiar with any actor on this one. I just knew it had won the Palm D'Or and that was it. The movie starts with Sonia (played by Déborah François), with a new born baby in arms, searching the city for Bruno (played by Jérémie Renier). He is a small time crook and the parent of the child. She is unemployed. They live a very shallow existence and he makes a living day by day in dubious, yet not very dangerous, ways. Many of his almost pathetic schemes to make money are shown during the course of the movie. Yet there are a few scenes that show us that the couple is in love, that there is a bond between them, but that can pass also as follies of youthful love and not really of a long lasting one. The very next day, Bruno sells the child for money, and when Sonia finds out collapses and has to go to the hospital. She denounces him to the police and, only in fear of the police (and this is very important), he goes to retrieve the child, and in this way he becomes very much in debt to the mobsters he sold them to. He retrieves the child but Sonia does not want anything with him anymore. He is in trouble, he has no home, no Sonia, the police are on his trail, and the mobsters take all the money he makes on his schemes to compensate for returning the baby. So in one or two days (not more) he sees his existence fall apart. There are scenes where he prays for Sonia's forgivance, scenes in which he gets beaten by the mobsters. And then he and another kid make a robbery and the kid nearly dies in the escape, and that makes him surrender to the police and mend his ways. Ok, the movie has a delicacy that comes from the simplicity of the scenes, is sometimes boring (but normal life often is), and is handled well by the directors and the two main actors, which were convincing, especially Déborah François. But some things are amiss. In the very last, and supposedly moving, scene in the jail, at visiting hours, they look to each other, don't speak, and the camera films continually 2 or 3 minutes Bruno as he cries. But this redemption of his only came about because he had no money! Not because of his love! He SOLD his own child half an hour before, and they are telling us that because a kid he robs with fell on the lake, he discovers that he has to mend his ways? If the mobsters didn't make him pay for returning the baby he wouldn't be short of money and he probably would have continued to do what he had always done. Well, maybe he redeemed himself out of love for Sonia and the child. That may as well be, and I can relate to that, but that is not the sequence the movie shows us. Again, he sold his own child, and just two days later, because Sonia does not open the door of her house and doesn't speak to him, he suddenly decides to go to jail? 2 days? Not believable. Also, halfway through the story, which had always focused the baby, suddenly shifts to Bruno, and the baby never appears again. Anyway, it is a movie that is powerful without having any powerful scene (which is a hard thing to do), but its a movie whose story becomes more important than actually the scenes that convey that story. The last crying scene (and sorry to disclose it, but I had to comment on that), is just a tearjerker. It is not substantiated enough by the character during the course of the movie. Cannes didn't see it that way apparently. They voted on a concept, a concept which here surpasses the cinematic techniques. For the third time I'll say, he didn't hesitate one single second to sell his baby, and in just two days he falls apart. Very convenient movie-wise. But hey, he was a small time crook, so his redemption is also cinematically small time. It makes sense.