LA PROMESSE Movie Review

The Promise

Just outside of Antwerp, Roger, a man running an illegal immigration mill, allows a critically injured immigrant laborer to die, and then covers up the crime by burying him in cement. Roger's 15-year-old son, Igor, has long assisted his father in running what is essentially a slave market, and he's forced to help bury the laborer and then lie to the dead man's frantic wife about her husband's whereabouts. Wracked with guilt and humiliated by his father's treatment not only of the man's wife but of him, Igor is forced to make an agonizing decision about the direction of his own life. Belgian directors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have created one of the most complex and devastating moral tales in modern film; the lives of the characters in La Promesse are never going to made whole, and no matter what road Igor takes he's going to leave at least some part of his world in ruin. Living with the pain of moral choices—even those that appear at first glance to be clear-cut—is at the heart of this riveting and powerful movie, which never pretends that doing the right thing will provide the rewards of riches, satisfaction, or even simple gratitude. Films this multi-layered, richly textured, and uncondescending are a rarity now, and that's one of the many reasons that audiences tend to file out speechless after screenings of La Promesse. It is, in just about every sense, a knockout.

NEXT STOP … Lacombe, Lucien, The Butcher Boy, Affliction

1996 93m/C FR BE Jeremie Renier, Olivier Gourmet, Assita Ouedraogo, Rasmane Ouedraogo; D: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne; W: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne; C: Alain Marcoen; M: Jean-Marie Billy. Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards '97: Best Foreign Film; National Society of Film Critics Awards '97:Best Foreign Film.VHS NYR