User Reviews

At the turn of the 20th century, film pioneers in the United States were shooting movies about the fantastic, pushing the envelope of special effects and melodrama, while European film makers were trying to capture the the essence of "real life." It's amazing how little has changed in a hundred years.

"La Promesse," a Belgian film by the Dardenne brothers, offers so little of the American drama-enhancers that at first it seems boringly mundane. But an interesting morality-play soon puts the viewer's mind to work. What is the main character, Igor, a street-wise kid supposed to do when his father, who has taught him every trick in the book, hides the accidental death of an illegal immigrant worker? Igor promises the worker's wife that he will look after her and her baby while her husband has gone "missing" but is unable to tell her the horrible truth.

Igor contemplates what to do, oftentimes while driving around a ghastly post-industrial landscape on his rickety moped. No music, just moped whining. In typical Dardenne style, there is a brief touching and funny scene in all of this misery. Igor is filmed actually having fun with his pals in a pitifully dilapidated, home-made go-cart -like all kids should- rather than contemplating such weighty issues. The effect is unforgettable.

Igor finally decides to make a break with his father and in a common but effective convention -- he uses the survival tactics that his father taught him (such as driving their van) against him, leaving the fat-ish father to go after his kid while squeezing onto his kid's moped. Truly a pathetic sight.

Igor, his hand played with his father, is now forced to confront the issue with the worker's widow and her baby which makes for a powerful conclusion. Sans music, of course.

Without entirely giving up the movie, the title, "La Promesse" actually has two meanings it seems. The first is the promise to the woman and her baby but the directors evidently are also rooting for "the promise" of a younger (post-baby boomer) generation to act altruistically. I'm reminded of the line in a John Cougar Mellencamp (baby-boomer) song, "Check it Out," when he sings wistfully, "Future generations...maybe they'll have a better understanding, Hopefully have a better understanding..."

In a sad coda, I saw "La Promesse" in Washington DC's last independent theater just days before it closed down, thus losing it's battle with the evil theater-chain empires. Movies like "La Promesse" are the kinds of films that allow one to restore the promise that there can still be thoughtful and unforgettable cinema out there in the land of formulaic Hollywood pap. These films need to be made and offered in our theaters and video stores...and taught in our film schools. They do more than entertain. They offer a window on life. If they can't survive in the "movie market," then (oh-no, the s-word) subsidize them and use them as teaching instruments to our students. Maybe future generations will revive the art -- and learn something in the process.

The first ten minutes were not exactly promising! I remember thinking, another hand-held camera job, this time set in the backstreets of a Belgian industrial city - yet another rite of passage tale - unprepossessing youth steals a pensioner's handbag from a car in the garage where he works, while his father, a squint-eyed, piggy-faced fatty, runs a racket fleecing illegal immigrants from the Balkans and Africa. However what is wholly remarkable about "La Promesse" is the way it slowly sucks the viewer into a realisation that this is not just a piece of documentary-style realism but an uncompromisingly honest study of character and conscience. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that no other film new to British TV last year moved or excited me as much. The performance by Jeremie Renier as the youth Igor is a tour-de-force. He is on screen for practically the entire film and it is his search for integrity after a dying African (one of his father's "clients") exacts from him a promise to assist his wife and baby, that forms the work's core. Igor has to come to terms with alienating his father, who, although a selfish and dishonest brute, has real affection for his son; parental/filial warmth is displayed when they drunkenly sing together in a cafe. But what the film finally says with such devestating certainly is that even integrity is something that can go unappreciated and ignored by the one towards whom it is intended. The ending speaks of a terrible price paid for redemption.

Some of you may have seen the Dardennes brothers 2011 film "The Kid with a Bike," which starred Jérémie Renier as the father of a disturbed 12 year old whom he abandons. In the Dardennes brothers first significant (1996) feature, La Promesse, you can see Renier as the troubled 15 year old protagonist, Igor, who shines in his initial foray into the feature film landscape.

Shot in a gritty cinema verité style significantly without music, La Promesse chronicles the unhealthy relationship between Igor and an amoral father, Roger (Oliver Gourmet). Roger proves to be cannily drawn, a bad man who is still fleshed out with some sympathetic characteristics. Despite beating Igor at times, the point is made that he still cares for the boy (in his own half-assed way).

Roger houses immigrants but also exploits them by overcharging for rent and undercharging their pay. When Amidou, an immigrant from Burkina Faso and one of Roger's construction workers, falls off a scaffold, Igor tries to save the man by applying a tourniquet to his bleeding leg. Roger, fearing that he'll be discovered by government inspectors, throws the tourniquet away, allowing the man to bleed to death. To add insult to injury, he dumps the body right at the construction site and covers the corpse with cement. Before Roger arrives on the scene, Igor promises the dying man that he'll take care of his wife, Assita (Assita Ouedraogo) and her infant child.

At the beginning of the film, Igor is introduced as a juvenile delinquent of sorts, who steals money from a woman while working part-time at a service station. The promise turns the boy into a responsible citizen as he ends up trying to help Assita after the husband's disappearance. The uncaring Roger even goes so far as paying a man to scare Assita into leaving by attempting to rape her (the subterfuge involves Roger pretending to scare the man off before he actually commits the crime). It gets worse when Roger creates a fake telegram which is delivered to Assita, falsely claiming Amidou is in Germany and wants her to meet him there. Only Igor's last minute intervention prevents Roger from delivering the beleaguered widow into the hands of sex traffickers. Assita is effectively drawn as she's not a complete goody two-shoes. There is a disturbing scene of animal sacrifice (a rooster is sliced up as part of her rituals) and later she has a breakdown, accusing Igor of infecting her child with some sort of disease. Fortunately Assita comes to her senses and they bring the child to a hospital for treatment. There, a sympathetic nurse allows Assita to use her identity papers so she can leave the country to live with a family member. There is a harrowing scene at the climax where Roger catches up to Igor at the service station where he used to work, with the boy preventing the father from chasing after them by clamping a chain to his leg.

All of this is pretty gripping but a bit predictable in the end as Igor is committed to helping the woman. Igor's confession is indeed satisfying but the Dardennes brothers abruptly break things off and keep us guessing as to what the consequences are of Assita finding out her husband is dead. Does she go to the police? Does Roger prevent her from acting or pay her off? Does Assita finally turn around and indeed move in with a family members in another country? What does Roger do to Igor? The Dardennes brothers wish to leave things to our imagination-not sure that is the best tack to take here as the story sort of demands more of a conclusive denouement.

La Promesse is indeed a gritty portrait of a disturbed father-son relationship as well as a damning chronicle of the exploitation of immigrants by unscrupulous men whose desire for monetary profit outweighs any humanitarian concerns.

More than ten years after its release this film by the Dardenne brothers still looks fresh and actual. This is the story of a father and son who are involved in smuggling and hosting illegal immigrants in the European Community. When one of the immigrants dies in the accident the father imposes a cover-up. The boy cannot live quietly with this deed and slowly gets closer to the widow and her baby, filling in the promise to care for them that he had made to the dying immigrant, and redeeming himself and his humanity in the process.

The quality and emotion of the film lie in the direct, almost documentary approach taken by the directors in telling the story, the realistic setting and especially in the splendid acting. Both Olivier Gourmet as the father and Jeremier Renier as the son give excellent performances, they are real, moving, caring for every detail. The two make this simple film a film to remember.

Mild *SPOILERS*

La Promesse, is the story of Igor, a young tear-away who spends his time robbing old ladies who stop by at the garage he works at, working on his go-cart, or helping his father in his work. His work however is helping immigrants across into Belgium and giving them lodging at a house that he is restoring. His father dominates Igor's entire life; that is until Amidou, one of the workers is accidentally killed... The rest of the film focuses on Igor making good on his promise to Amidou that he will look after his wife and baby. The film uses this set-up to look at the power of loyalty, Igor's loyalty to his father, or to the promise he made.

This is the first film that I've seen from the Dardenne brothers, but I defiantly look forward to seeing the more recent film Rosetta (1999), their careful handling of the young actor Jérémie Rénier is superb, finding both the subtle innocents and the growing adult awareness that is growing within him (this is a coming of age story) not to mention the fantastic performance from Olivier Gourmet as the boy's father, a man who will beat his son one minute than joke with him the next. There may be some bad points with the film, for instance the central relationship between Igor and Amidou isn't developed enough for us to believe he would willingly stick by his promise, but these hardly deter from this brilliantly acted character piece.

7/10

In the mid-90's, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne had an unpleasant collective experience encouraging them to trim the work force and be as minimal as efficient. You don't win audiences by just taking the camera and "shooting", but for all their innovative directing, storytelling is the siblings' strongest suit, and seldom had directors provided such rich palettes of humanity's struggles through globalized economical crisis as the Dardennes did.

Recently, President Trump dared to call some third-world countries with a "S" slur, I only wish him to live the same experience as the protagonist. His name is Igor, he's played by Jeremie Renier, he's only 15 but it's never too late to learn. With his long blonde hair and angelic next-door look, we wouldn't believe this mechanic apprentice is the kind of kid to put himself in trouble, so when he steals an old woman's wallet after checking her engine, we think there must be a "good reason". A girlfriend. A motorcycle to buy. Maybe drugs. But that's too conveniently 'normal' for his age. Igor is no ordinary teenager, we see him with his father Roger, played by the talented Olivier Gourmet, a mix between French Gérard Jugnot and American Paul Giamatti, an everyday man who found the worst possible way to make money. He drives a van occupied by undocumented immigrants, some African, some from Eastern Europe (EU had half less members at that time) and takes them to a shackled building where current residents complain about the rates and the stink. There are obviously some dysfunctions in the sewer lines but Roger, pampering and pimping them, promises to take care... if they help him to finish the construction. But they have to pay.

One of them doesn't have enough money, he's a gentle looking African man named Amidu and had just welcomed his wife Assita and their baby boy. Roger has a few standards, he doesn't throw them out but cuts the debts out of Amidu's "wages". This is such an ugly and sordid world that we immediately understand Igor's initial misdemeanor, he's not bad but simply trapped in a maturity too precocious not to be flawed. Igor didn't grow up to be cynical, he just embraces his job with a sense of filial obedience (and maybe love) for his father who, as a token of their complicity, lets him smoke, drive the car or hang out with him at bars. And the first act works on two levels, it's both a father-and-son relationship exposition and an undercover documentary about immigrants' treatment where the camera, right behind Roger or Igor seems to slide between narrow corridors where the doors hide unshaven and worn out men gambling, having sex for money or Assita, whose housewife's dignity doesn't deserve to be surrounded by such sordidness. It's an atmosphere of neo-realism channeling the image of the Turkish Prison from "Midnight Express". In a way, these people are like prisoners of a condition.

There's an incredible scene where Igor and Roger lure five immigrants into a café by making them believe they're going to sail to America, only for the cops to apprehend them while Igor hide in the lavatory. This is a powerful scene because it showcases something even worse than human trafficking but betrayal within that trafficking, and betrayal for symbolic purposes, so that the town's mayor can prove that he's handling the situation. So maybe Trump should be reminded that the "S" word he's referring to works in a system of pipes and ramifications that know no frontiers corruption-wise, horizontally and... vertically. Immigrants are like pawns of a system and so is Igor within his father's schemes, this is not a benign parallel because from the start, from the way Igor was peeping at the immigrants' rooms, you knew he didn't look at them like Roger did, not like a warden, but a cellmate, jailed behind the bars of a corrupt adulthood. He could enjoy karting with his friends, having a few moments of freedom on his motorcycle (the film's defining image), but his main occupation was so demanding that it cost him his apprenticeship. At some point, ignoring the warning of his boss, he leaves the garage when Roger calls him for emergency. And then death takes a halt in his life and his journey can begin.

To escape from work inspectors, Amidu falls from the scaffold and get mortally injured, Igor tries to prevent the hemorrhages but Roger lets him die and decides to bury him under the cement. The most shocking thing is that we're not even "surprised" by Roger's behavior. But there's a glimmer of hope, before Amidu dies, he makes Igor promise him to take care of his wife and his boy. A last exchange, but that suddenly puts Igor in a situation of conflicting interests with Roger, and Igor knows his father is wrong and will do anything to get rid of Assita when she starts talking about going to the Police.

In a poignant and courageous existential impulse, Igor doesn't just take care of Assita but saves her. It's not as easy as it sounds, he must gain her trust, escape from his father and perhaps the toughest thing which is to find the right moment to tell her about her husband. But if this journey started with a tragedy, we know it ends with a redemption, and goes through the gradual awakening of a conscience, of a boy who stopped being an actor. And Jeremie Renier is quite an actor, and I would say "a reactor". He starts as a boy who's seen so many things that he can't even differentiate between good and evil. But he knows for sure that lying to this woman and abusing her is wrong and he acts accordingly so.

As for the believability of a teenager and an African woman to slip through the net, let's say that the capability of the Dardennes pair to make such a powerful lesson of empathy with a minimalist budget and equipment is a credit to it.

I liked this film because it dared to be different. It was about as far from a "Hollywood-style" film as you can get! The story involves some pretty nasty characters. In particular, a teenage boy and his father. They make money by exploiting illegal immigrants in France--picking up the poor people and housing them in a tenement--all as exorbitant rates. This pair appear to be people without souls as they lie and cheat again and again. However, when one of these illegals accidentally dies, the paths of the two diverge. Dad just wants to dump the body and could care less about the man's widow and young child (wanting to sell her into a life of prostitution), while the boy who witnessed the final words of the dying man promised to look after the family. What, exactly, happened next I'll leave for the viewer. Provided you have a tolerance for movies about realistically seedy people, this is a film worth seeing.

An interesting twist, not taken in the film, would have been if later the boy had found out that his father was not really his biological dad--but the "dad" raised him from infancy after his own real family died while being smuggled into France by him. This could be an interesting path.