Movie review: Lorna’s Silence

by Alex Bentley

Most foreign films that get a release in the U.S. are of the “pre-approved” variety, meaning that they've either garnered notice via commercial success or by being nominated or winning awards. In other words, a clunker getting released stateside is a rare event because the system is set up so that those types of films never see the light of day outside their own country.

All of which makes the presence of Lorna's Silence (Le Silence de Lorna) in U.S. theaters mighty puzzling. Granted, it was nominated for two awards at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival (winning best screenplay) and was also nominated for a Best Foreign Film at the 2008 Cesar Awards, France's version of the Oscars. However, the half-baked plot of the film makes one wonder what exactly those who praise it were smoking.

The protagonist of the film is, obviously, Lorna (Arta Dobroshi), an Albanian woman caught up in the murky world of ... fake marriages to gain citizenship in Belgium. She has married Claudy (Jeremie Renier), a drug addict, in order to gain her citizenship, and she is plotting, along with her handler, Fabio (Fabrizio Rongione), to kill Claudy via an overdose soon in order to quickly and cleanly exit the marriage so she can marry a Russian man so that he can gain citizenship (why Belgium is such a hotspot for this type of activity is never explained).

There's only a few complicating factors. Claudy is kind of hit and miss as a drug addict. He's actually on a upswing toward quitting, and Lorna is worried that it might seem extra suspicious if he were to die of an overdose now. Lorna is also skittish in general – despite the demands of her handler, she tries to set up an alternate plan (involving fake spousal abuse) that would allow her to get a quickie divorce that would spare Claudy's life.

All of this is what can be gleaned from the surface of the film. Unfortunately, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, the writing/directing brothers team, fail to make anything else clear, including what the title refers to, since Lorna is rarely, if ever, silent. Big steps in the plot are either glossed over or not explained at all, leaving the viewer grasping at straws and wondering why specific significant events are not shown. And even if they were explained, all of it is still so ... mundane and predictable. It's clear from the beginning of the film that Lorna will always act in her own best interest, so any possible suspense is long gone by the time danger starts cropping up.

All of the actors do decent work, but the nature of the film overshadows any of their acting skills. As the star, Dobroshi comes off the best in just her third film. All the main male characters are too confusing to ever get a true handle on the respective actors' abilities.

If the Dardenne brothers had just provided a few more lines of exposition, they could have had a completely different film. But since they didn't, Lorna's Silence can be viewed as nothing but a disappointment.