‘The most difficult word to say is “Cut!”’: an audience with Cannes conquerors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

They have won the Palme d’Or twice, and their latest offering about teen motherhood scooped the screenwriting prize. The brothers discuss their working methods, who inspires them, and what they disagree aboutEarlier this year, the Cannes film festival saw a triumphant new appearance from European cinema’s kings of social realism and social conscience. The Dardenne brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc, now 74 and 71, presented a movie that is one of their very best: Jeunes Mères or Young Mothers, a deeply compassionate, intelligent drama about a home for teen mothers or mothers-to-be in the directors’ home town of Liège in Belgium. These young women are faced with the existential question: is it sensible to give their infants up for adoption, or a fundamental loss of moral courage?The Dardennes have become known for intensely naturalist performances and handheld camerawork, radical simplicity and clarity. They have won the Cannes Palme d’Or twice, firstly for their drama Rosetta in 1999, about a young woman who must look after her troubled mother in a trailer park – starring the then nonprofessional teenager Émilie Dequenne – and secondly the terrifying, faintly Greeneian drama L’Enfant or The Child, from 2005, with Jérémie Renier as a petty criminal who gives his own baby away to a “private adoption” broker and then desperately tries to get it back. Continue reading...

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