Gentleness, compassion and love are the keynotes of this quietly outstanding new movie from the Dardenne brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc, for whom I think it is a return to form after some strained melodrama in their recent work. There is such simplicity and clarity here, an honest apportioning of dignity and intelligence to everyone on screen: every scene and every character portrait is unforced and unembellished. The straightforward assertion of hope through giving help and asking for help is very powerful.
The Dardennes have again established their gold standard for social realist cinema at Cannes, and for regular attenders there is another poignant dimension – the memory of their Palme-winning film Rosetta presented at Cannes a quarter of a century ago, starring the then 17-year-old Émilie Dequenne in a very similar role to the characters here; her recent death from cancer was a great sadness.
The location here is Liège in Belgium, at a state home for teen mothers or mothers-to-be, who are being helped and counselled in how to have their babies, how to bathe and feed them, how to make contact with prospective adoptive parents (if that is what they want), how to deal with existing issues of addiction and depression and how to find housing. The young mothers live together as a community, with a cooking rota.
Perla (Lucie Laruelle) is a young woman of colour who has had her baby, Noé, but finds that the baby’s father, who has just been released from a young offenders’ institution and got a job in a garage, is testy and distant with Perla and his baby son. Jessica (Babette Verbeek) is pregnant, and – after her baby Alba is born – desperately seeking something like closure by trying to make contact with her own mother, Morgane (India Hair) who gave her up for fostering when she was Jessica’s age. Julia (Elsa Houben) has been a homeless drug addict but with baby Mia is turning her life around in the home, with a traineeship at a hairdresser, and a caring boyfriend with whom she has some classic Dardenne scenes on a motor scooter, zooming down the street, that time-honoured movie realist trope for the freedom and vulnerability of the young.
But perhaps the most complex figure is Ariane (Janaïna Halloy Fokan), a 15-year-old who wishes to give up baby Lili, to the rage of her own mum Nathalie (Christelle Cornil); in her anguish Nathalie wishes to be a grandma or even replacement mum, if Ariane doesn’t want the baby – supposedly determined to quit her drinking and the abusive situations which made Ariane so determined not to go the same route.
The babies-having-babies imagery is of course what makes this film so poignant – and also the realisation that the careworn older generation, still conflicted about the question of their own responsibility for all this and encumbered by their mistakes and the consequences of their choices, were in their teen daughters’ situation so recently. Then there is the heart-wrenching sweetness of the babies themselves: baby Lili smiles tenderly at Ariane at a terribly ironic moment. What lies ahead for these children? The same thing, or something different?
The film boils down to a fundamental question: having decided against abortion, is it more responsible, more loving, more heroically sacrificial in fact, to give up your baby for adoption? Or is it an existential failure of will, of courage, perpetuating a middle-class buyers’ market in adoptive parenthood? There is of course no answer to be had, but there is faith in a better future here, and the final scene, involving the poem The Farewell by Apollinaire, is very moving.
• The Young Mother’s Home screened at the Cannes film festival.
