The Child (2005)
(L'enfant)
Country: BEL/FR
Technical: col 95m
Director: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
Cast: Jérémie Renier, Déborah François, Jérémie Segard
Synopsis:
A petty larcenist sells his nine-day old son to underworld traffickers on a whim, then retrieves him when his girlfriend reacts differently to the way he expected. However, he then finds himself in debt to the gangsters and locked out from his family and his life spirals downwards.
Review:
The Loaches of the north-east follow up The Son with another scenario of the unthinkable: what if a man had so little contact with his child that he saw him only as a commodity to be fenced along with his other stolen goods? To any parent in the audience the sequence in which he casually arranges for his baby to be exchanged in an empty appartment is all but unwatchable (mercifully the child seems to sleep through much of the ordeal to which it is subjected, despite surely having a soiled nappy); his decision to reverse the process is based almost purely on the apprehension that his girlfriend will shop him to the police. Interestingly, his redemption comes not through some act performed for the child itself but through a self-sacrificial gesture in favour of the minor who is his accomplice and whose effect - a prison sentence - is to distance him from his new family (and also from his underworld creditors). Perhaps it is this ambiguity that makes the final collapse into tears less than wholly convincing, though I believe it is meant to be so.
(L'enfant)
Country: BEL/FR
Technical: col 95m
Director: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
Cast: Jérémie Renier, Déborah François, Jérémie Segard
Synopsis:
A petty larcenist sells his nine-day old son to underworld traffickers on a whim, then retrieves him when his girlfriend reacts differently to the way he expected. However, he then finds himself in debt to the gangsters and locked out from his family and his life spirals downwards.
Review:
The Loaches of the north-east follow up The Son with another scenario of the unthinkable: what if a man had so little contact with his child that he saw him only as a commodity to be fenced along with his other stolen goods? To any parent in the audience the sequence in which he casually arranges for his baby to be exchanged in an empty appartment is all but unwatchable (mercifully the child seems to sleep through much of the ordeal to which it is subjected, despite surely having a soiled nappy); his decision to reverse the process is based almost purely on the apprehension that his girlfriend will shop him to the police. Interestingly, his redemption comes not through some act performed for the child itself but through a self-sacrificial gesture in favour of the minor who is his accomplice and whose effect - a prison sentence - is to distance him from his new family (and also from his underworld creditors). Perhaps it is this ambiguity that makes the final collapse into tears less than wholly convincing, though I believe it is meant to be so.
(L'enfant)
Country: BEL/FR
Technical: col 95m
Director: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
Cast: Jérémie Renier, Déborah François, Jérémie Segard
Synopsis:
A petty larcenist sells his nine-day old son to underworld traffickers on a whim, then retrieves him when his girlfriend reacts differently to the way he expected. However, he then finds himself in debt to the gangsters and locked out from his family and his life spirals downwards.
Review:
The Loaches of the north-east follow up The Son with another scenario of the unthinkable: what if a man had so little contact with his child that he saw him only as a commodity to be fenced along with his other stolen goods? To any parent in the audience the sequence in which he casually arranges for his baby to be exchanged in an empty appartment is all but unwatchable (mercifully the child seems to sleep through much of the ordeal to which it is subjected, despite surely having a soiled nappy); his decision to reverse the process is based almost purely on the apprehension that his girlfriend will shop him to the police. Interestingly, his redemption comes not through some act performed for the child itself but through a self-sacrificial gesture in favour of the minor who is his accomplice and whose effect - a prison sentence - is to distance him from his new family (and also from his underworld creditors). Perhaps it is this ambiguity that makes the final collapse into tears less than wholly convincing, though I believe it is meant to be so.