ABOUT THE MOVIE |
Genre: Drama
Starring: Jérémie Renier, Déborah
François, Jérémie Segard
Director: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
Rating: PG
Year Made: 2005
|
TECHNICAL
SPECIFICATIONS |
Languages:
French
Subtitles: English
Aspect Ratio: 16x9 Letterbox
Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0, Dolby Digital 5.1
Running Time: 1 hr 35 mins
Region Code: 3
Distributor: Comstar Entertainment
|
|
SYNOPSIS:
The Child is the new social realist drama from Jean-Pierre
and Luc Dardenne, who won the Palme d'Or in 1999 with Rosetta.
It is the story of Bruno (Jérémie Renier), a
20-year-old petty thief whose 18-year-old girlfriend, Sonia
(Déborah François), has just had a baby, Jimmy.
She adores him, but Bruno isn't so sure - and one of Bruno's
fence contacts tells him there is big money to be made in
selling babies for black-market adoption. One of the most
suspect claims I've been hearing at Cannes on behalf of some
movies is that they are about "redemption", which
often turns out to be hardly more than a shallow style gimmick.
But The Child really is about redemption, and the film treats
this subject with the moral seriousness it deserves. Bruno's
fatherhood is contrasted with his quasi-paternal responsibility
to the Artful Dodger boy-thieves he controls, which brings
the movie to a crunch as Bruno faces the Dostoevskian responsibility
of giving himself up to the police. A moving and satisfying
film..
MOVIE
REVIEW
L’Enfant
is a very simple film, so simple that it's emotional power
and societal statements are resonantly clear and undeniable.
And yet it’s the most complex film, so ambitiously detailed
and precise in its intentions that if it were to fail it would
still have more to say than anything released by major studios
today.
The masterfully inspired structure of the film, using both
its ingenious screenplay construction as well as clever cinematographic
techniques, relays purely the information we need to know
when we need to know it giving the film an extremely realistic
"feel”. This realism is accomplished in many ways
and is in no way trite or pretentious. The film's realism
is heightened further by its homage-to-New-Wave home camera
style cinematography, which at times is gritty and blunt but
always honest and exact. Not only do we believe everything
that is happening making the audience feel and live vicariously
through the main characters.
For
some the film is going to be too bleak or the ending is going
to be unsatisfactory. There's no twist ending and the brothers
don't partake in any moral posturing. Bruno's life as a small
time crook is neither vilified nor romanticized. He's presented
as just another human being in a cold harsh world in which people
suffer but also find love and comfort in the strangest of ways.
The Child is most effective as a rite-of-passage tale; this
is evident when Bruno repeatedly pushes Jimmy's empty carriage
around town, and later when he is forced to push a motorcycle.
Bruno's cross to bear is that he carries the burden and reluctant
obligation not just of parenthood, but adulthood.
AUDIO/VISUAL:
The DVD comes with a choice of audio tracks – a Dolby
Digital 5.1 track and a Dolby Digital 2.0 mix. Either of these
will suffice for the minimalist and realist soundtrack without
any music score, both having clarity and a tone that is appropriate
and necessary for the film. The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix does not
demonstrate any wider use of the sound design, and in fact restricts
it to practically one mono centre channel for the majority of
the film.
The film can occasionally look dark and murky, but this is entirely
how it should appear, and it’s like that for a reason.
The very tone, grayness, use of color and grain of the The Child
are all carefully balanced to convey much more than is said
by the characters about their lives.
SPECIAL FEATURES
No extra features are included in this Code 3 DVD.
MOVIE
RATING:
OVERALL
DVD RATING :
Review
by Lokman B S
|
|
This
review is made possible with the kind support from Comstar
|
|
