criterionforum.org

Lincoln Center is going to show their entire retrospective: Beyond L'Enfant: The Complete Dardenne Brothers

I've never seen even one of their films. If there's one I should catch, which would it be? Le fils?

If there are two or three I should catch, which others should I try to see? Rosetta?

This all presupposed that my time won't be somewhat dictated by other concerns, but if I make a point of seeing a particular film, then there's a decent chance I'll see it - particularly if I order tickets ahead of time or make a date. The Dardenne bros. have been on my list of directors whose films I've never seen for much too long now.

You can't go wrong with anything since La promesse. I'd put that and Le fils as top priorities.

What about all the stuff before La Promesse that doesn't seem to be available anywhere?

I would strongly suggest seeing Rosetta. I don't know much about the earlier films, and though its a good opportunity to catch them, I probably wouldn't stretch to fit them in if you aren't taken by one of their major films.

swo17 wrote:You can't go wrong with anything since La promesse. I'd put that and Le fils as top priorities.

Jun-Dai wrote:What about all the stuff before La Promesse that doesn't seem to be available anywhere?

I'd actually give you the completely opposite advice as swo17 and Shrew: see all the stuff that's not on DVD. You can catch up with the rest later. There are good DVDs available of everything since La Promesse.

That is a good point. I wasn't thinking about DVD availability. If I were in the area, I would definitely go check out all their earlier stuff, which I haven't seen yet. From what I've read though, their earlier films bear little resemblance to their later ones.

It should also be noted that if you are R1-locked, several of the later films are either OOP or otherwise unavailable.

Manohla Dargis takes a brief look at the brothers' career.

Rosetta can be seen in its entirety here. And well worth the time. It's a fine movie with no need of a "sympathetic" character to draw you in.

Rosetta is sadly OOP
I always thought i owned the AE, but apparently not...

New film by Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne has a title and a release date : "Le Jeune Ahmed". Release : 22.05.2019.

I suppose the release date refers to Belgium, since it's a Belgian account.

THE UNKNOWN GIRL

This was more successful than the Dardennes' previous attempt at a conventionally dramatic subject, Lorna’s Silence (the only film of theirs I really don’t like), and Adele Haenel makes every scene (and I don’t recall here ever being off screen) work, minute by minute. After the fact, the detective plot looks more than a little shonky and overly convenient, which definitely takes the whole film down a peg or two, but there’s still a lot to admire and enjoy here.

zedz wrote: Fri Apr 17, 2020 5:36 am (and I don’t recall here ever being off screen)

There's at least one (part of a ) shot where she is off screen. It really stood out for me when it happened and I started paying attention after that when watching this yesterday and didn't notice any other instant.

Spoiler

It's the scene where she visits the spot where the body was found. The camera pans to the bank of the canal with the machine part on the left and empty space to the right ("The body was found to the right of that machine part"; paraphrasing).

I thought that was a nice little touch. Agree with zedz's assessment, I enjoyed it quite a lot but it's no Le fils.