La Promesse

FROM OUR VAULTS! | Two-time winners of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, for 1999’s Rosetta and 2005’s L’enfant, Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne first came to world attention with La Promesse, their third feature. A raw, powerful, realist drama set in the industrial city of Liège, La Promesse centres on the moral awakening of 15-year-old Igor (Jérémie Renier of L’enfant), whose father (Dardenne regular Olivier Gourmet) runs a shady business employing illegal immigrant labour. Igor adores his dad, and helping him run the crooked business is part of the natural order of his life. One day, however, an African labourer is fatally injured in a workplace accident; young Igor makes the dying man a promise — and his efforts to keep that promise will set son and father on a collision course. La Promesse is shot in an effective semi-documentary style, and features impressive naturalistic performances; the directors cite a dialogue on guilt in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov as the film’s inspiration. Actor Gourmet headlined Canadian director Philippe Falardeau’s 2006 comedy Congorama. "Recall[ing] the glory days of Italian neorealism...La Promesse is an absolute stunner: dense, austere, nervously paced and yet, in the end, a work of great power and moral purpose" (Wall Street Journal). Colour, 35mm, in French with English subtitles. 93 mins.