'Lorna's Silence' Review

Arta Dobroshi, left, plays an Albanian immigrant in Belgium, and Jérémie Renier a drug addict, in Lorna’s Silence, the new film by the Dardenne brothers. Watch the trailer: http://www.moviefone.com/movie/lornas-silence/35496/main

>>>>Here's another foreign film that won't get a wide distribution. There's no well known actors in it and its grim subject matter won't make it popular. We saw it at a nearby theater that specializes in foreign & small films and where we take Mom since there's no steps to make it accessible for her. Lorna's Silence isn't a Mom Movie so she stayed home.
>>>>This is the first film I've seen made by the Belgian Dardenne brothers who are well regarded as directors of urban dramas. The plot concerns an Albanian girl named Lorna living in Belgium and working in for a dry cleaner. She's involved with criminals who pay her to use her legal residency to marry foreigners to get them the same permit and later divorce them. They paid a drug addict Claudy to marry Lorna so she could obtain her residency card and now they want to kill him off so she can marry a Russian gangster needing a card and later divorce her. Claudy is well played by Jermeie Renier last seen as one of the brothers in Summer Hours, an earlier blog entry. He lost weight to play this strung out junkie.
>>>>Lorna has plans to open a small cafe with her boyfriend using the money from this arranged marriage. But She's against having Claudy who's trying to stay clean murderd from an 'overdose' and tries to arrange a quick divorce him to save his life. When she learns she's pregnant and the Russian doesn't want children, she's forced to have an abortion but will she go through with it and succeed with all her plans is what sets the rest of the story in motion. Will her conscience aid her in making the right decisions? The ending is not what you expect and I won't spoil it by revealing it here.
>>>>Lorna's Silence has no music score except for songs played on the radio or in clubs and its somber photography of the characters' working class environment adds to the story's bleakness. It's a disturbing story about making difficult choices in desparate economic times. Arta Dobroshi as Lorna will surprise you as she carries out the demands of the script. She seems passive while under pressure submitting to the criminals' demands and of her boyfriend working with them but she posseses an inner strength that's slowly revealed throughout the course of the story and needed at the conclusion. Yes there's subtitles for three languages spoken here but again, don't let this scare you away from this thought provoking film.