Standing Witness

Our critic reviews Korean vampire film "Thirst" and rousing docs "The Cove" and "Severe Clear."

It’s hard to say where, exactly the movie steps wrong. Dobroshi’s performance is a big part of the problem. She should have been more closed-off and unreadable from the get-go. She starts the movie seeming quite receptive to other people’s feelings (even though she pretends brusqueness); the performance is further along in the transformation process than the narrative will allow. As a result, I couldn’t buy Lorna’s semi-redemptive transformation even as a movie conceit.

Dobroshi isn’t helped by the Dardennes’ script, which treats its underworld elements half-assedly. Lorna and her cohorts are initially made out to be tough as leather — people who’ve done this sort of thing before and have a playbook. But they keep doing things (and allowing things to be done) that are sure to make the authorities suspicious — at one point deciding it’s okay for Lorna to marry the Russian a couple of weeks after her Belgian fiance’s divorce or death (whichever comes first).

None of this would be a problem if the film’s approach to picture and sound weren’t rooted in the real (or the “real”); most noir plots and Hitchcock stories are innately stupid. Here, though, the chasm between the Dardennes’ aesthetic and the characters’ Gang-That-Couldn’t-Shoot-Straight blundering makes you unsure whether it’s the crooks or the filmmakers who are in over their heads.

As has been noted elsewhere, there are little departures from the brothers’ m.o. The cast includes established actors rather than quasi-unknowns, the movie is shot on 35mm film rather than Super 16mm, and there are points where music issuing from an onscreen source continues even though there are cuts indicating the passage of time (a Scorsese/Spike Lee approach). But such elements will be of interest only to filmmakers and Dardennes completists. The core of “Lorna’s Silence” is half-baked — and worst of all, there are five or six scenes that seem to have been intended as bracingly honest that instead come off as actor’s workshop exercises. The inevitable moment when Lorna offers herself to poor Claudy, hoping to distract him from his urge to fix but also giving in to her slowly-deepening feelings for him, strips both actors bare (though only the actress is seen from head-to-toe — very Hollywood); I think we’re supposed to be shocked and moved by the scene. But it’s the least organic, least revelatory moment the brothers have written, verging on “Six Feet Under” prefab rawness. Even the final shot struck me as unimaginative — a go-to art-house curtain-closer that’s less open-ended than uncommitted. (Warning: Spoiler ahead.)

There isn’t much else to recommend “Lorna’s Silence” save for the hard cut from the upbeat Claudy riding his bicycle into the distance to a shot of Lorna in their apartment, silently folding his clothes. The decision to convey Claudy’s death via narrative ellipse finds a cinematic equivalent for the shock and dislocation one feels after a staggering and unexpected loss. (Lorna knew such a thing might happen, but hoped — believed — it wouldn’t.) This ruthless transition is a peerless instance of form expressing content. It’s what the rest of “Lorna’s Silence” should have been — and an example of the sorts of dead-on creative choices one hopes the next Dardennes movie will have in spades.

Matt Zoller Seitz is our guest critic for the month of July.

“Thirst” opens July 31st in limited release; “The Cove” opens July 31st in New York and Los Angeles; “Severe Clear” opens July 31st in New York and August 7th in Los Angeles; “Lorna’s Silence” open July 31st in New York and Los Angeles.

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