Liège has always been an open-air studio for the Dardenne brothers, who saw with realism, but also tenderness, this scene shattered by deindustrialization that would have prosperity, along with the golden age of the steel industry, before falling into a depressing darkness. And on the Meuse to the border of Liège, the rich or the poor. immutable.
For the ninth film, therefore, the Belgian duo chose along with “Tori and Lokita”, to follow the chaotic journey of young migrants, who came from Benin through the classic channel well established by African smugglers who did not too philanthropic, in their daily. fight to get the precious sesame, the refugee card, which will allow them to imagine, finally, a more stable life and determined to look to the future. Except that at the beginning, the Dardennes couple dropped the first card, the man and woman are far from being siblings as they try to explain it to the investigator who manages to draw their exact profile. Tori, a boy, barely
14 years old, things went very fast, being identified as a “young witch” in his village and therefore threatening, one day when another would be offered, in the name of pagan beliefs, he would be made regular. As for Lokita, her supposed sister, she did not have the same happiness, she was ordered to leave the territory and she had no other solution but to hide and accept the proposal of her “employer”, a pizza maker to an Albanian. accent, to go from delivering pizzas (and drugs) with young Tori, to another job, to the cellars of an industrial wasteland where he will take care of guarding a clandestine greenhouse for the cultivation of cannabis. A work from beyond the grave, in the literal sense of the term. Lokita will be separated from the world and into a harrowing state of modern slavery, with the “bonus” of a one -time seigneur right, depending on the mood of the moment. It all ends badly, with his murder during an escape attempt made by his faithful friend Tori. He will be killed, in an undergrowth, by his master’s henchmen …
It was a violence we were not used to, until then the brothers. Although this does not seem entirely anachronistic, for those who have closely examined the philosophical approach of these two directors.
There’s even more anger here, with Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, the aphony of their cry informing their cinema after joining the Shakespearian questioning, being or not being: “Kill or not kill!”.
“This transition from problematic death to murder remains at the heart of the cinematographic ethics of Dardennes” pointed out a specialist at Levinas and Dardennes. The thinking of the two filmmakers, philosophically speaking, has borrowed to make it a Nietzsche paradigm to raise or lower the scale of shame, of immorality in their characters. The main concern becomes the change between the different subjects: subject-film and subject-viewer. Perhaps Deleuze will also find his account here between space-time and space-image.
Just as in the work of non-professional actors their cinema sees all its freshness, to avoid the crystallization of form. Suddenly, the idea that Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne’s films would look alike, seemed less convincing. Filming their backgrounds, for example, is a way of putting the moment before, the moment before. The then remains unchanged, Levinas taking care of it, except, perhaps, in “Tori and Lokita” where there seems to be a desire to try anathema, Characterized murder.
“We’re not geniuses, we’re slow …
This is the modesty of the craftsman, it takes time to do things. Each time, we start from the beginning, creating a relationship between the camera and the story, the rhythm of a scene, a strategy, it takes a long time ”(Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne).
Applauded for a long minute, in the great hall of Lumière, “Tori et Lokita”, the ninth film of the Dardennes, remains burdened with the absence of this mischief that has won them over in previous seasons when they have twice won the Palme d ‘gold for “Rosetta” (1999) and “L’Enfant” (2005). Scenario-wise, the problem is undoubtedly at the arch level of the second part, more precisely from the escape of young Tori and Lokita and the chase that followed. It’s as if these two main heroes (Tori and Lokita) have been deprived of the right to be the protagonists of a true fiction with unexpected events and unforeseen circumstances. The final turn-point, tragically, will only have the effect of “documenting” a statement, with the risk of changing it into speech, another? Not counting the fact that in this film, Belgium is shown under the only (?) Costume of the legislator and guardian of the laws, leaving the role of thugs and other bandits in white or blue collar, to residents of foreign origin, up to Dutch license plate. For the Dardenne brothers, this film is dedicated to “all the Tori and Lokita who are in Europe. It is to continue to demand that we change the laws for the reception of exiles and in particular the young …” . Which works. Meanwhile, and because of these injustices and wrongdoings, the Meuse remains as dark as ever.
About Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne:
“The Theme and the Theme”
“It was only when we thought that such a friendship could be the core of our film, we felt that our two main characters, Lokita and Tori, had become living, unique people, emerging in the media’s fate of young migrants. this .called ” Mena ”, ” unaccompanied foreign minors ”, that they escaped the description of a case, a situation, a theme, a subject. Not in the slightest their situation. Absolutely not On the contrary, their situation as exiled, lonely, exploited, embarrassed teenagers found comfort thanks to their relationship that grew stronger in response to this situation and, out of the blue, our film became a film. also criticizing this situation.violent, unjust, these young people are experiencing in exile in our country, in Europe.
For Lokita the teenager and Tori the barely childhood boy, both from Africa, Cameroon and Benin, friendship is not just the fact of being there for each other, to help each other. to pay the smugglers, to regularize their situation, to find black jobs, send money to the family, etc … but as well as the fact that they can’t do without each other, to love as if siblings, make a family so as not to be alone in the dark. its nightmares, to be soothed by a gesture, word, song, so as not to sink into its grief and anxiety attacks.
In technique …
The way we describe in our script is the relationship between Tori and Lokita’s bodies, the importance we give to their games, their exchange of accessories, their two voice songs, the maternal gestures they have l ‘one for the other will make you feel how our camera and microphone will listen to all the details of the bodies, gestures, looks, voices that speak, suggest this friendship that makes it possible to withstand trials of their plight of exiles and proves to be the refuge of an important human dignity preserved in the midst of a society more overcome by apathy, if not to the ridicule of its interests.