#Dardenne Brothers

[azersam]

fav films of 2022:

Triangle of Sadness // Ruben Östlund Vortex // Gaspar Noé Blonde // Andrew Dominik Tori & Lokita // the Dardenne brothers Nitram // Justin Kurzel See You Friday, Robinson // Mitra Farahani I Walk On Water // Khalik Allah Riceboy Sleeps // Anthony Shim Concrete Valley // Antoine Bourges EO // Jerzy Skolimowski

[forhandsthatsuffer]

L'enfant (2005), dir. Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne

[pacingmusings]

Seen in 2023:

Tori and Lokita (Jean-Pierre Dardenne & Luc Dardenne), 2022

[moviemosaics]

Tori and Lokita

directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, 2022

[cinematicmasterpiece]

deux jours, une nuit (2014)

[celuloideycarbono]

Bicycles in cinema.

Clips from: Close (L. Dhont, 2022), Call me by your name (L. Guadagnino, 2017), Le gamin au vélo (Dardenne brothers, 2011), Juno (J. Reitman, 2007), Whispers of the Heart (Kondo Y., 1996), The Last Emperor (B. Bertolucci, 1988), El sur (V. Erice, 1983), Turk Fruits (P. Verhoeven, 1973), If... (L. Anderson, 1969), Les parapluies de Cherbourg (J. Demy, 1964), Jour de fête (J. Tati, 1949), Late spring (Ozu Y., 1949), Ladri di biciclette (V. De Sica, 1948).

Music: La bicyclette, Yves Montand.

[romanceyourdemons]

dardenne brothers style tiktoks. no non-diegetic music whatsoever. use only local, originally non-professional actors, and reuse the same handful of actors in many different projects. shoot extreme close-up long takes on handheld cameras. explore themes of complex father-child relationships and the nuanced evils of mundane life and hang on just a second

that whole “wes anderson style” tiktok trend aims so low. there should be a wong kar-wai style tiktok trend. set it to yumeji’s theme from in the mood for love (2000). shoot in long shots disjointed from one another. use saturated colors and frames within frames. explore themes of urban isolation and the voyeurism of modernity stunting young adults’ ability to act on their desire for vulnerability and intimacy. this could be great it could be the next big thing

[yasminewestbank]

all movie asks answers from the ask meme post bc it was fun

Your favorite movie released this year DIDNT WATCH ANY 2023 MOVIES YET.. CRIES

A movie you think is underrated - obliged to say An Elephant Sitting Still by hu bo bc i can never find it in dvd stores and i unfortunately honestly dont know if i will find a screening of it in a cinema available to me ever again but i dream of it

A movie you think is overrated - going to put two, one new and one classic. first one is parasite. im bitter abt this movie bc it was advertised like crazy and the reviews were so hyping and then i went and it was average. its not a bad movie but not only doesnt deserve the hype the hype ruined it for me bc if i went with the proper expectations i wouldnt have gotten so disappointed. a classic is alphaville of godard... obviously its a good movie and im sure it was groundbreaking at the time but by now the story doesnt feel as sophisticated bc this genre of story is at this point.. i wouldnt say overdone bc its still a great genre but its not fresh or suprising by now without making it more complex. this movie felt like a blueprint to the 1984 book soviet dystopia genre so it didnt keep up with the times. many classic movies are still exciting and fresh just like when they came out including other movies of godard but this isn't one of them. but i can also see how it was probably one of godard's top commercial movies, bc it was easier to digest and more basic than his other work

A movie you like but wouldn't recommend - stalker of tarkovsky and tarkovsky movies in general bc i think it would probs be boring to most ppl (its slow and not much plot) + tarkovsky movies r slow and the kind of movies u have to watch in the movie theater

A movie musical you like - annette of leox carax. and its not only a good movie the music is so good too

A horror movie you like - audition by takashi miike . love japanese violence

A sci-fi movie you like - high life by claire denis. AND it has robert pattinson in it!!!!!!!111 and hes amazing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

A fantasy movie you like

A movie in your native language you like - Life According to Agfa by Assi Dayan. one of the only good israeli movies that exist bc i didnt see so far any good, worthwhile or complex israeli movie besides this one (not including documentaries).

A foreign-language movie you like - (i put a bunch already so ill do one in a language i didnt put yet) tori and lokita by the dardenne brothers. takes place in belgium in french about a young refugee woman and a refugee child from africa who pose as brother and sister. this is going to destroy you but its such a good movie i cant recommend it enough but i still cant recover

A movie you wish you could un-watch - the disney secretariat movie. it was so bad oh my god it was so fucking bad im in pain. i want disney to give me back the braincells i lost. this actor horse deserves so much better

A performance you think is underrated - Vicenç Altaió (yeah had to google this one) in story of my death by albert serra. his acting was insane. probably one of the best acting perfomances ive ever seen, specifically the toilet scene stuck with me. so it's a period movie about casanova. there a scene in the movie that all of it is just him taking a shit. and of course it sounds goofy but it was actually a really human and sensitive depiction and his acting was so natural i completely forgot i was watching a movie. he really made this scene what it is. and tbh i think even from those other photos u can see what i mean on him

A performance you think is overrated

A movie made better by the ending - only thing that comes up in my mind is barton fink of joel coen.. i can barely remember this movie bc i watched it years ago but (spoilers) i can just remember there was a twist in the middle that flipped the whole movie on its head and it was super enjoyable. besides this i cant think of anything

A movie ruined by the ending - the holy mountain of jodorowsky... at the time i watched it i was so disappointed by the ending it was so anticlimactic. i think he thought he did something but it just didnt work. (might be spoilers) same vibes when a story pulls "and then he found out it was all a dream". like.. in this case it just didnt feel fitting it was disappointing. but i watched it years ago so i wonder if i would feel the same now

A trilogy/franchise you like cant think of anything

A movie you never get tired of talking about - drive my car by ryusuke hamaguchi. its fun to talk abt this movie bc even tho there are a lot of themes and details that make it what it is, its not too complex to not be able to grasp and pinpoint them. so its complex enough to be a good movie but not too complex to not be able to talk abt it, both abt the good and bad things (bc there r also choices the director made that i dont like). and there's also so much to talk abt that stems from this movie not only in the movie itself but also what it shows abt japanese cinema, contemporary japanese cinema/this generation of japanese directors versus the previous generations. also i love this director in general i recc all his movies

A movie you never wanna hear about again - if i hear one more thing abt any marvel movie im going to kill myself

A movie you look forward to watching (could be an upcoming release or not) - aki karutismaki's fallen leaves that came out this year

A movie you think looks beautiful - red desert of antonioni. i adore the aesthetic of this movie. tbh its probably my favorite movie visuals wise. i just cant stop adding photos from google bc i love everything slkfdsflsfgds

A director you think is underrated - tbh hard to think of anyone.. i think any director i like got some kind of recognition, and if i think ok which one doesnt get mainstream recognition it would be basically most of them. so im trying to think.. who do i rlly think doesnt get recognition. maybe the crown should go to the photographer petra collins who actually directed the first season of euphoria before sam levinson kicked her out and claimed he did it and stole all her work

A director you think is overrated - HITCHCOCK!!!!!!! HES NOT THAT GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HES TRULY NOT THAT GOOD!!!!!!!!!!! I COULD PULL UP 10 DIRECTORS FROM HIS TIME AND BEFORE HIM THAT ARE SO MUCH BETTER THAN HE IS THAT ARENT AS HYPED UP. godard and kurosawa made movies so much better and decades before him so the reason hes hyped cant even be that what he made was groundbreaking for the time. hitchcock is MID

An animated movie you like - the cowboy bebop movie... its so fun and satisfying to watch i watched it so many times dsfdf

A silent movie you like cant think of anything

Your favorite movie - possession by andrej zulawski. im speechless abt it. dont read a summery go into this blind. its such an insane experience (sin look my fav movie is a polish movie)

Your least favorite movie i dont rlly have one i have a whole bunch of movies i dont like but i dont have THE hated movie

[sparsilemuses]

current test muses for @sparsilelove as of mid-may!

face claims featured: archie renaux, ben barnes, brenton thwaites, charlie hunnam, darren barnet, frank grillo, joshua bassett, marisa tomei, mason gooding, riz ahmed, rudy pankow, sarah michelle gellar, tom hardy.

//

these are organised roughly by how much i'm itching to play them!! most muses have at minimum a slice of life and a genre (supernatural, sci-fi, horror, etc) verse. the first verse listed is their main / default and any others are alternates / by request.

i am open to all kinds of plots, though as ever my preference is romantic connections! currently only looking to ship with men because i'm too gay to function. the ideas listed are just some starting points.

kamran mustafa (riz ahmed) is a softhearted, hardheaded man of the people ⇾ slice of life: formerly homeless, now running an unofficial halfway house in the poorest part of a city, he's all about grassroots action and giving everything he's got to those in need ⇾ dystopian future: an important figure in the rebellion against the elitist powers that be, often throwing himself directly into harm's way for the good of others & ideas: friends to lovers with another grungy weirdo, opposites attract with some corporate dbag

orion kemper (joshua bassett) is a cocky genius with too much money and zero self-restraint ⇾ slice of life: after graduating high school at 14 & college at 18, ri sold an app for a stupid amount of money and has spent the last 4 years dicking around ⇾ supernatural: born werewolf with a permanent sneer at bitten wolves, set to inherit alpha status of his family pack one day (if he doesn't get himself killed first) & ideas: friends to inappropriately cuddle, older men for him to top, someone unimpressed with him

lysander crawshaw (archie renaux) is jaded, paranoid proof that curiosity killed the cat ⇾ supernatural: still recovering from being possessed by belias, a greater demon, lys struggles with the lines between reality, dream and hallucination ⇾ slice of life: raised in a cult, lys brings with him a truckload of trauma, a sprinkling of self-hatred, and a dollop of dang adorable & ideas: someone who is his anchor to reality, someone with a similar experience, someone he can start over with

tiberius cooper (rudy pankow) is brash and loud, but in a cornered animal kind of a way ⇾ horror i: the "final girl" of a group of friends (including his twin brother) who were targeted by a serial killer while on vacation, tib sleeps sitting up holding a knife ⇾ horror ii: after his identical twin brother livestreamed a string of violent crimes (think 'spree'), tib has all but become a recluse for his own safety ⇾ slice of life: having never really recovered from the sudden death of his twin brother, tib covers up his debilitating anxiety by being the most obnoxious guy in the room & ideas: someone who knew him before everything (esp. exes of his twin), someone from a support group, some morbid weirdo who is drawn to the darkness in him now

elliot hawthorne (charlie hunnam) is a soft, sweet nerd who loves to take care of people ⇾ slice of life: a film professor who was recently dumped after five years with his ex, ell's students have been complaining lately that they'd like to watch something other than dardenne brothers movies, thanks & ideas: student or former student, friend who always thought he could do better than his ex, co-worker

beatrix calhoun (marisa tomei) is a trainwreck in motion, barely keeping up appearances ⇾ celebrity: a well-known musician who has been active since her early twenties, beatrix is still in love with songwriting and touring, leaving no room for anything else ⇾ slice of life: an artist who manages to charm the pants (often literally) off various wealthy / connected people to keep her afloat & ideas: fan, young musician who looks up to her, touring band member, ex who is also in the industry, producer, step-son, kid's friend

dandelion corrigan (tom hardy) is a cynical witch who believes his family is cursed ⇾ supernatural: an actual witch, with an actual curse, piecing together an existence in the woods making herbal remedies and mild infatuation potions for the locals ⇾ slice of life: an oddball from a pagan-ish family who makes his living selling things from his little farm & making ointmints, certain he'll never be happy & ideas: let's break this curse yo

ava blake (sarah michelle gellar) is an enigma at best and a nuisance at worst ⇾ espionage: a well-trained assassin / spy, ava has discovered a nefarious plot within her organisation that is no good very bad ⇾ slice of life: a single mom very much inspired by lorelai gilmore, ava runs a cafe / bakery / bookstore called the nook and has no time for your nonsense & ideas: rival spy / double agent, normal guy caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, another single parent

athanasios wilde (ben barnes) is very, very bored, to the point of insanity ⇾ supernatural: an immortal shapeshifter, ath's lived hundreds of lives in hundreds of bodies ⇾ crime: a significant general in his father's crime family, ath is a particularly unsettling kind of ruthless & ideas: another cursed immortal or someone seeking to become immortal, unsuspecting normie drawn into his bullshit

peregrine talbot (brenton thwaites) is extremely polite, but probably making fun of you ⇾ supernatural: a fae prince, beholden to the 'seelies can't lie' rule, perry is fascinated by mortals, occasionally living among them ⇾ slice of life: trust fund kid with a scholar's mind, perry is actually nice, as long as you don't interrupt him & ideas: mortal who falls into the fae realm, supernatural creature who needs his help, classmate from college, friend from the wrong side of the tracks

taliesin rafferty (darren barnet) is me proving trans guys can be fuckboy dbags too ⇾ slice of life: tal vibes are scrolling grindr while he's on a date with you, sneaking out while you're in the shower, pretending to forget your name so you don't get attached & ideas: best friends with feelings, the guy who sees through his bullshit, the guy he chases long enough to fall for

phoenix dawson (mason gooding) is a genuine, no shit, actual nice guy with no trauma ⇾ slice of life: a dance teacher with a heart of gold, nix believes in random acts of kindness, smiling at strangers, and telling the people you love how much you love them loudly and often & ideas: long term boyfriend / husband for domestic cuteness, trainwreck best friend he's always there to pick up when he falls, guy who bullied him in high school

edoardo "eddie" mancini (frank grillo) is the typical salt of the earth every man, doing his best to get by ⇾ slice of life: after the tragic death of his wife, eddie is finally forced to confront the secret he's always kept about his sexuality and hopefully figure out some kind of happiness (while his kids [24 - 38] mock him for being uncool) ⇾ any other genre: bewildered mechanic stumbles into supernatural shit / ends up in the apocalypse / some other shit, chaos ensues & ideas: someone from his past he once hooked up with, a friend of one of his kids, please lord let him get picked up at like a farmer's market or some shit, customer who leaves his number, barista who writes flirty messages on his cup, etc

[tilbageidanmark]

Movies I watched this Week #116 (Year 3/Week 12):

  🍿

The Maid by Chilean director Sebastián Silva is my favorite film of the week! A perfectly simple drama about the life of a live-in housekeeper. After 23 years of humble domestic service, aging, still-virgin Raquel is loyal to the large family that employs her, and becomes protective of her job, when they hire a second maid to help her. 10/10

🍿  

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s latest movie, Endless Poetry, is the second part and sequel of his surreal auto-biography, after ‘Dance of Reality’. Visually-rich, excessively avant-garde and inventive as always. 5/10.

🍿 

Pacifiction, my first Polynesian tour de force (actually it’s an international co-production, directed by Catalan provocateur Albert Serra). Picked by ‘Cahiers du Cinéma’ as the Best film for 2022. A moody and very slow-burn, it’s supposedly a political thriller that leisurely rolls on, aimlessly and with great intensity. The story of the French High Commissioner in Tahiti is about colonialism, white privilege and the entitled ruling class, a Graham Greene for the modern age.

Mysterious and intriguing, it reminded me of ‘The Conversation’, my all-time favorite Coppola’s, even though they had nothing in common on the surface. For nearly 3 hours of incredibly-building atmosphere it felt like a unique, transforming film experience. But then - it suddenly cut off and ended! Without any resolution, or conclusion, or even just an acknowledgement. It’s as if the last 10 pages of the script were ripped out before the end-titles. Very disappointing!

It also featured a traditional dancer, Shannah, in one of the best transgender roles I’ve ever seen.

I was planning on following this up with another of Serra’s controversial films, the pornographic ‘Liberté’ (about an orgy in the forest), but Pacifiction’s ending bummed me out so much, so I’ll keep that for another time. So only 5/10.

🍿

The Kid with a Bike, my second by the Belgian Dardenne brothers (after ‘The elephant and the butterfly’). A sad story of a difficult childhood: A 12-year-old boy had been abandoned by his father, and eventually finds some solace with a kind hairdresser. 9/10.

🍿    

5 more from Jean-Pierre Jeunet:

🍿 “Did no one ever wonder how a young waitress afforded such sophisticated decoration for a flat in Montmartre, one of Paris’s most expensive districts?”

Jeunet has just re-cut and released his 2001 comedy‘ The Fabulous Destiny of Amélie Poulain’ as a short film which reveals that Amélie was actually a KGB spy.     

🍿 A Very Long Engagement, a toned-down World War 1 fairy tale romance starring Audrey Tautou (and Jodie Foster). Bleak and surrealistic, it reminded me of Peter Jackson’s ‘They shall not grow old’. 9/10.

🍿 As a life-long (53.5 years) vegetarian, I never mustered the courage to watch his uncomfortably meat-heavy, post-apocalyptic Delicatessen, until now. A grotesque, black comedy nightmare, starring the rubber-face Dominique Pinon (who played in all his movies the last 35 years), Modern day Hieronymus Bosch canvas, wilder than Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, as surrealist as Fellini at his ‘The Clowns’ best.

I was planning on seeing also his Delicatessen-related ‘The city of lost children’, but to be honest, his overindulgent style was too much in large dozes, so I’ll keep it for another week.

🍿 Two snails go away, a quirky animated short based on a poem by Jacques Prévert, each line read by another of his many life-long collaborators.

🍿 My favorite of his is still Nonsense (Foutaises - “Things I Like, Things I Hate”) from 1989, one of the greatest shorts in Cinema IMO. [Copy is in French with no English subtitles].

🍿

I was happy to finally find a free copy of Truffaut’s romantic The Last Metro, which I haven’t seen in over 40 years, and which I always recalled as one of his best love triangles. Well, it’s top-tier maybe, but not ‘best’. Catherine Deneuve is at her most magnificence, and the score by Georges Delerue is beautiful too. Very close to ‘Day for night’ thematically, it was the 2nd part of a planned 'Entertainment world’ trilogy. (Photo Above).

🍿  

2 films about reading aloud:

🍿 Las Analfabetas, another wonderful story, my 3rd Chilean movie of the week. This one about an illiterate middle-aged woman who reluctantly learns to read, thanks to the insistence of a young teacher. 8/10.

🍿 The reader, my first (disappointing) film with French actress Miou-Miou. A literary male-gaze, Chinese-box parable about a woman who places an ad in the paper, offering an in-home reading-aloud service. As she comes into their homes, the stories that she reads to them become part of her story, moving in and out of their lives. 2/10.

🍿   

The Cabin is a quiet, meditative little movie about identity, that has no reviews on line! Like Antonioni’s David Locke (in ’The Passanger’), a restless man from Luxembourg is trying to escape his life, and it’s not clear why. But instead of the Sahara desert, he drops off an Arctic cruise at the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, wishing to go further, to the edge of the world. There’s a cabin out in the wilderness he dreams about. But also a 7-year old daughter that he left behind, without any explanations. Enigmatic mystery that does not offer closure. 7/10.

🍿    

Fucking Åmål, what it is like to be a teenager in a small Swedish town in the 1990s. A sweet budding romance between two awkward girls who feel they don’t belong.

"Varför måste vi bo i fucking jävla kuk-Åmål?" (Translation: “Why the hell do we have to live in fucking Åmål?”

🍿  

The Gunfighter, mustachioed Gregory Peck as the notorious Jimmy Ringo, the "fastest gun in the West". Another tight, well-told western with 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Bonus: The gunfighter (2014), with Nick Offerman’s mellifluous voice breaking the Forth Wall - always good for a fun re-watch.

🍿    

Timbuktu, my first award-winning masterpiece from Mauritania, by Malian film director Abderrahmane Sissako. Another harrowing story of terror in the barren Sahara desert. Senseless religious laws imposed by a patriarchal and fanatic group on simple villagers. A heart-breaking tragedy - 10/10.

Here’s the scene of the forbidden football match played with an imaginary ball.

🍿    

After the difficult, depressing ‘Timbuktu’, I had to palate-cleanse into something more hopeful, so what’s better than Chaplin’s first full-feature, the uber-sentimental The Kid (whose name was - surprise! -’John’!). A perennial favorite, a perfect balance between comedy and drama, painfully autobiographical.

🍿    

2 films about Catholic priests "molesting” children:

🍿 Deliver Us from Evil, a sad 2006 Oscar nominated documentary about one California priest who raped dozens of California kids, only to be protected by the monstrous Catholic church, as per their habit for thousands of years. A tedious narrative, well-known for decades, it follows one priest, one bishop and a couple of little girls. It gives the priest and his esteemed defenders a respectable deference, because - ‘religion’. It lets them uses passive-tense euphemisms in every sentence, even when acknowledging guilt: “The wrongs that may have happened”, “to whom I may have offended”, “I was not made aware at that particular time”.... - Utterly disgusting and hard to watch.

🍿 So I “had to” go back and watch Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight again which I saw many times, including last year. It’s a perfect ‘All the cardinal’s men’ story in every way, from every single cast member, to the Howard Shore score, to the way the story unfolds, and the investigation develops, to the emotional balance of each scene. NOT anti-Catholic, for sure. 10/10.

“If kids got raped by clowns as often as they get raped by priests, it would be against the law to take your kids to the circus”.

🍿  

Living Is Easy with Eyes Closed, a sweet Spanish period piece about a 40-something, bald and bespectacled teacher who’s a die-hard Beatles-fan, and who drives to Almeria, hoping to meet John Lennon where they are shooting his 1966 ‘How I won the war’.

I couldn’t sit through Hamesh Patel’s ‘Yesterday’, and I haven’t seen any of the other fictionalized/Inspired-by Beatles Fan Movies, but this had just the right balance of gentleness and melancholy. 7/10.

🍿  

2 more about L.A.:

🍿 How Movies Design Los Angeles (And Which One Got it Right), by Colombian José María Luna is a video essay of the kind I usually dislike, but it grew on me. Inspired by ‘Los Angeles Plays Itself‘ and peppered with quotes from Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs, it postulated that movies have always shown the past as LA's golden years. But it ends by finding in Spike Jonze’s ‘Her’ a positive vision of the city - Nostalgia of the future. 7/10.

It got me itching to re-watch many films I saw ('La la land’, A marriage story’, ‘Singing in the rain’, ‘L.A. Confidential’) and others I haven’t yet (’Boyz in the hood’, 'Babylon’).

🍿 And because of the clips with limo-driver Paul Giamatti, I tried on the sentimental Saving Mr. Banks, not usually my thing. The Disney entertainment machine working full-time to create the myth of Uncle Walt the deity, but the fictional daughter-father bonds worked on me. So 5/10.

🍿  

Another random pick from the list of films with a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, The Dog Who Wouldn't Be Quiet is a recent, strange film from Argentina. It tells of a random series of weird events in the life of some guy, from having his neighbors complain about his dog, to a meteor that poison the air above 4 feet. The guy soldiered on stoically through obstacles and hardships, but I didn’t get the point of the movie - 3/10.

🍿    

Re-watch: The Tin Drum, the German adaptation of Günter Grass’s masterpiece. The Danzig trilogy won him the Nobel for literature, and this film won the Oscar in 1980. German history of the 20th century told in Magical Realistic style. I liked the book better.

🍿  

'Chunky’, a terrific compilation of great dance moves from vintage movies, by awesome editor YouTuber ‘Trampsta’. More editing goodness by him on his channel.

🍿  

Whats Buzzin Buzzard, a 1943 Tex Avery MGM cartoon about two turkey vultures, that deals with the then current food shortage.

🍿  

2 films I couldn’t finish:

🍿 After watching the guy from ‘Great Art Explained’ channel talks about Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, I thought I’ll try Ferris Bueller's Day Off. But I didn’t get to the scene where they visit the Art Institute in Chicago and see the artwork, as I had to bail after 20 minutes, I guess I’m just too old.

🍿 I also did try on a whim the new lightweight Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game, but it seemed like an irritating first film student effort where the only appeal is the main character’s GINORMOUS mustache. Not among the worst films I’ve ever seen, but I had to turn it off after 11 minutes.

🍿  

Throw-back to the "Art project”: 

Disney Adora.

Adora as The kid.

🍿

(My complete movie list is here)

[forleejehoon]

Jehoon IG update:

Couldn't watch this in Jeonju so watched it today. Thank you the Dardenne brothers :-D

[byneddiedingo]

Jérémie Renier in La Promesse (Luc Dardenne and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, 1996) Cast: Jérémie Renier, Olivier Gourmet, Assita Ouedraogo, Rasmane Ouedraogo, Frédéric Bodson. Screenplay: Luc Dardenne, Jean-Pierre Dardenne. Cinematography: Alain Marcoen.  La Promesse is one of those films in which you can see from the very beginning that things are not going to turn out well for any of its characters. But what keeps you going is the complete commitment and skill of its performers, especially 15-year-old Jérémie Renier, and the careful articulation of its moral conundrums by the Dardenne brothers. Renier plays Igor, who has left school to work as an apprentice garage mechanic, but is often in conflict with his boss (Frédéric Bodson) because he keeps getting called away to assist his father, Roger (Olivier Gourmet), who is involved in the underground traffic in undocumented immigrants. Roger exploits the immigrants, many of whom come from Eastern Europe or from Africa, seeking work in the industrial towns of Belgium like Seraing, the Dardennes' home town. Roger provides slum housing and forged documents for the immigrants, and employs them illegally as construction workers on a house he's renovating. In addition to charging them exorbitantly for substandard lodging, he sometimes makes a little money by turning them in to corrupt immigration officials out to fill their quota. Igor doesn't have second thoughts about what his father does, and even seems to be something of a chip off the old block: He filches a wallet off the seat of a car he has just serviced and assures its owner that she must have lost it somewhere, then buries it in a vacant lot after cleaning out the cash. But one day he is called away from the garage -- the boss tells him not to come back after so many absences -- because Roger has just been warned that inspectors are coming to his illegal construction site. He speeds there on his motorbike to warn the workers, who include Hamidu (Rasmane Ouedraogo), a man from Burkina Faso who has just been joined in Seraing by his wife (Assita Ouedraogo) and infant son. During the attempt to flee the site, Hamidu falls from the scaffold on which he has been working -- we don't see the fall but instead we see Igor discover the unconscious Hamidu lying beneath the scaffolding. When he sees that Hamidu is bleeding from his leg, Igor tries to make a tourniquet from his belt, but Roger arrives on the scene and snatches the belt away: Hamidu is too far gone, and taking him to the hospital would only expose Roger's illegal practices to the authorities. When Roger goes to find a place to hide the dying man, Hamidu wakes long enough to elicit from Igor a promise to look after his wife, Assita, and their child. With Igor's reluctant help, Roger buries Hamidu in cement on the construction site. But the promise he has made awakens Igor's conscience, and the film takes its course from there, as Igor tries to help Assita escape from the situation into which Hamidu's death, and Roger's attempts to cover it up, place her. The Dardennes build real suspense as the story progresses, but there is no deus ex machina to provide an unlikely happy ending. Only a kind of moment of clarity for Igor gives his and Assita's dilemma, with its disturbingly contemporary resonances, a faint glimmer of hope.

[saint-starflicker]

I wasn't alive yet in 1959, but I am also thinking there were other ways to go about it for a well brought-up young man. Knox knows Chris is "practically engaged" but is still going to break them up—Not the most noble of intentions to begin with, but he can still maneuver that. How often does he get invited to dinner parties with the Danburys? All the boarding school brats' parents seem to know each other and want to keep up with one another's joneses. Chris asked Ginny about the play, Knox can remember that and audition himself in hopes that Chris will be at the after-show events, and/or beg Neil to pry Ginny about her brother's girlfriend. Annoying, too many degrees removed, but there was an alternative there. He could send an easily-compromised letter divulging his intentions to begin courting her, and hope the way is clear for a definite letter back saying yes or no.

Those scenarios weren't as good to Tom Schulman as the scenario that he wrote, based on his life and his friends and some of his own imagination...So I do think it's fair to notice that Chris wasn't shown to be interested in Knox at all and that fact should've been respected but wasn't. Compare that to Sally Wheeler from School Ties 1992, who was a flawed character but at least was obviously attracted to David; Connie Baker from Mona Lisa Smile whose relationship with Charlie gets actively sabotaged by Betty, because Connie would keep reciprocating Charlie's affections and pursuing a relationship with him otherwise; Meredith Dardenne from If We Were Villains who was obviously unhappy in her relationship with Richard.

Maybe none of those movies or books that "did it better" would even be as popular if it weren't for Dead Poets Society existing, but the Knox/Chris subplot went the way it went because that was the unexamined norm at the time. I think it's all right to notice that that's not okay now: Too many great-grandmothers reminiscing about how they met their husband going something like, "He wouldn't leave me alone and I didn't want to make a fuss by rejecting him. He wore me down by constantly asking me out on dates." Schulman wrote it that way, probably because that's the way it was in his real life. And it is bad—it's my least favorite storyline in the whole movie, and my least favorite type of movie plot of all time.

I guess the question is...is the way we assert "that was so not okay" now, genuinely constructive? I expect Knox fans in the 21st century to already know that what canon Knox did in the movie actually isn't okay in real life, back then or now. (Sorry to my grandaunt, but that was not romantic.) I think we can also try to understand why Schulman wrote that like it's normal, why Peter Weir who invited so much eleventh-hour collaboration did not change this thing, Knox's actor was happy to have that job, I don't know Alexandra Powers' opinion of it back then or more recently, and why audiences in 1989 didn't consider romanticized stalking a dealbreaker. Are we doing the best we really can with that information and thoughtfulness?

Every Hollywood movie in the 20th century had a shoehorned romantic subplot. I have heard rumors of people in film school discouraged by their professors from writing women characters that were not romantic interests, so there would be no demographic appeal calculated by studio executives, and no green-light to investors to pay for the making of that film. I did not hear about anyone in the industry speak out against this until Guillermo del Toro about Pacific Rim ("It's important for little girls to know not every story has to be a love story.") That was in 2013.

I do still think Knox and Chris were the weakest link in the writing of that movie, but knowing the cultural norms of the 1950's and that of the film industry in the 1980's means that I can't really hate on a random Knox fan who probably has a headcanon where he wasn't so badly-written.

okay I'm gonna need the dps fandom to put on their critical thinking hats for a second 👀

imagine you live in a time before social media. before mutual friends on apps and before being able to search up someone's instagram profile after you meet them to follow them and maybe say hi.

imagine you just met someone you REALLY LIKE and you don't know anything about them, except when you talk for a little you find out what school they go to. and you want to talk to this person again. what would you do?

if the answer is "well, I'd probably ask around people I know for their phone number, and go to their school in my free time hoping to run into them so we can talk", then I regret to inform you but that is actually a very normal and appropriate answer!!!

however for some reason some of y'all think knox doing that in the movie counts as "stalking" apparently!!!

like. this is not the modern day? just showing up to someone's school trying to talk to them is not "weird" because it is one of and if not the ONLY OPTION!

and if anyone here says "but he didn't even go talk to her! he just stared at her from far away which is creepy." my SIBLING IN FELLOW DPS ENGAGERY!!! SHE WAS GOING TO AN AWAY GAME!!! SHE IS A CHEERLEADER! THEY DO THAT! knox literally LIVES IN A BOARDING SCHOOL. he does NOT know much about the goings-on of the outside world because they seldom get free time and he literally has to SNEAK OUT of the grounds without an escort just to go socialize. he DIDN'T GO UP TO HER because she was GETTING ON A BUS!!!!!!! his ass does NOT know the schedule of ridgeway high's football game attendances 😭!!!!

and if people bring up why he went back after the party, that was to APOLOGIZE. imagine if he never even tried reaching out to say sorry??? like yeah I know he got flowers and a poem and that's not the most "correct" apology in that circumstance but I guess he was trying to clean up his image/reputation a bit which tbh not a bad thing to do after f#cking up THAT horribly.

I seriously don't want anyone calling (movie) knox a stalker or a creep in a non jokey way because as bad as you believe what he did in the party scene is, this one thing at least is just not true.

and yes he literally never sought out chris again after apologizing. I don't know what to tell you man like this is just the reality of what happened

[romanceyourdemons]

pour vous

https://www.instagram.com/p/CsUy44CtLMK/

i knew a wong kar-wai style take on the wes anderson trend would be great. now we just need a fritz lang and a dardennes brothers one

[wcharaf]

Three Movies to Watch by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are Belgian filmmakers known for their work in the world of contemporary cinema. They were born in Engis, Belgium, with Jean-Pierre being born on April 21, 1951, and Luc being born on March 10, 1954. The Dardenne brothers have collaborated throughout their careers and are often referred to as the Dardenne brothers in the film industry. The Dardenne brothers gained…