L'Enfant Review
By David Kempler
L'Enfant Terrible
And baby makes three. Actually, two.
I was horribly disappointed by "L'Enfant" because it won the coveted Golden Palm at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. To me it is nothing more than a silly romp of amorality. Yes, I suppose the point is its amorality but that's all there is in this otherwise gloomy story set on gloomy streets in gloomy weather. It comes to us from the acclaimed Belgian filmmaking brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne and is supposedly their masterpiece. This does not bode well for their previous work.
Bruno (Jeremie Renier) is the central character in this film and it is hard to imagine that this young fellow has survived to live even this long. He seems without deeper thought than a rat stimulated to go after a piece of cheese and reacts only to his immediate needs with not a thought to what might happen ten minutes later. His girlfriend Sonia (Deborah Francois) is a veritable genius in comparison. That places her at the approximate IQ level of a potato.
Bruno survives (barely) by panhandling in an Eastern Belgium steel town and committing crimes more befitting a 10-year old. His world is turned upside down, if that is possible, when Sonia returns with their newborn son. At first she cannot find Bruno because he has sublet their apartment to strangers without her knowledge. She of course is furious. Naturally when she finally tracks him down they frolic in the park like little kids. Presumably we are to assume that the real infants are actually the parents!! Wow! Deep.
Just when it appears Bruno cannot sink any lower he manages to by selling their infant for some fast cash. He feels no guilt over this until Sonia is upset. Seemingly confused by her reaction he sets off to recover the child because perhaps there may have been something wrong with what he has done. He's not sure but he suspects it might be possible.
The rest of the film is his pursuit of getting the infant back. Personally I didn't care if he got the kid back or not. All I was concerned about was whether this piece of crap would ever end. Oh hell, I'll give it away. The movie does eventually end.
