Dir. by Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne
Images: Handheld camerawork is most affecting when it catches Igor and Assita in medium shots and (rare) close-ups. The Dardennes’ style reminds me of Dumont’s, though they don’t share his fondness for self-consciously “cinematic” long shots. Favorite images: Igor whitening his teeth in front of a mirror; Igor sobbing on Assita’s shoulder; the look on Igor’s face as he sits in a bar, drinking with Roger and two women; Roger stretching out his hand, asking for his glasses.
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“How can you be guiltier than anyone in the eyes of all? There are murderers and brigands. What crimes have you committed to blame yourself more than everyone else?”
“My dear mother, my deepest love, know that everyone is guilty in everyone’s eyes. I do not know how to explain it to you, but I feel that is so, and it torments me.”
Belgian filmmakers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne cite the above exchange from Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov as the genesis of La Promesse, their first feature to garner much attention in America. Marcel’s guilt and torment is played out onscreen in the person of Igor (Jérémie Rénier), the fifteen-year-old son of a slumlord who traffics in illegal immigrants. When one of their tenants dies in an accident, Igor is forced to confront the consequences of his and his father’s actions while fulfilling “the promise” he makes to the dying man: protecting the man’s wife and infant son becomes for Igor both a burden and a vehicle for possible redemption.
La Promesse is a wonderful film whose beauty is born from the Dardennes’ suffusion of honesty and moral complexity into standard narrative conventions: the simple two-act structure, Igor’s bildungsroman, the basic quest for human connection. It came as little surprise when I learned that the Dardennes had worked in documentaries for two decades before moving to narrative films. While watching La Promesse I was reminded most often of Krzysztof Kieslowski and Bruno Dumont, filmmakers whose careers traveled similar trajectories. Like theirs, the Dardennes’ cinematic language is composed of simple observations, deliberately eschewing the conventions of classic continuity editing. I can’t think of a single instance of a shot/reverse-shot, for instance. Instead, the handheld camera lingers at a distance, sometimes peering over shoulders and only rarely moving in for a close-up (and even then only on Igor and Assita, the widow who becomes Igor’s maternal surrogate).
The performances are likewise completely natural—so much so, in fact, that I was surprised to discover such extensive filmographies for both Rénier and Olivier Gourmet, whose turn as Roger, Igor’s father, is utterly convincing. I had assumed that the Dardennes, like Dumont and Robert Bresson (who casts a long shadow here), had employed nonprofessional actors. One of my favorite scenes takes place in a bar, where after singing together, Igor and Roger sit down for drinks with two women. We have learned in an earlier scene that Igor is a virgin, but Rénier’s uncomfortable and self-conscious performance here makes such exposition unnecessary. So “real” is Igor, in fact, that I still find it difficult to believe that Rénier has become something of a teen idol.
The combined force of the Dardennes’ cinematographic style and the natural performances can be felt most powerfully in a few key scenes. In the first, Igor lunges for Assita, who has rejected his help, understandably suspicious of his motives. Instead of fighting her, though, as I had expected, he clings fiercely to her, burying his face in her shoulder and sobbing. I can’t quite explain my response to the scene. I would slip inevitably into the banal if I launched into some discussion of maternal longing, and yet that basic, inarticulate desire for human communion (or comfort or sympathy or love or…) is precisely what the scene communicates. The same could be said of the requisite showdown between father and son, which is staged brilliantly and which generates more suspense than I would have expected from such a film. By crafting Roger and Igor with such care, the Dardennes are allowed to turn what is too often a black and white “coming of age” scene into a confrontation whose emotional and moral consequences must be felt by the viewers, despite our best efforts to avoid them. It’s no coincidence that for most of the scene our focus is directed toward Roger, the man who is being rejected and the man for whom we can still find sympathy despite his often despicable behavior.
I had hoped that by this point in my response I would have “discovered” a solution to the enigmatic ending of La Promesse. Jonathon Rosenbaum apparently had the same problem, writing, “I find it impossible to imagine what transpires between Assita and Igor after the final shot.” I’m going to fall back on an old trick and say, “Well, maybe that’s the point.” The closest analogue I can find is in one of my favorite novels, Nadine Gordimer’s July’s People. (Am I really quoting myself?)
July’s People ends when a helicopter of unknown origins flies over the village and lands nearby. Maureen, acting on instinct like an animal, runs toward the sound, although she is unaware “whether it holds saviours or murderers; and — even if she were to have identified the markings — for whom” (158). Gordimer has referred to the finale as a Pascalian wager, “Salvation exists or doesn’t it?” (Wagner, 112). Stripped of all certainties, removed from all roles and expectations, and armed with only a new self-awareness, Maureen flees both the old which is dead and the new which has just been born.
Igor and Assita are likewise transformed by their experience, suddenly unsure of their roles, their futures, their relationship. I wanted so badly for the Dardennes to cut to a reaction shot of Assita so that I could somehow gauge her emotions, but that desire was rightly frustrated. Instead, they give us only a long shot of two people walking away from us: an African widow with child and the young man who she allows to carry her bag.