Product Description
L'ENFANT - DVD Movie
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #42504 in DVD
- Brand: Sony
- Released on: 2006-08-15
- Rating: R (Restricted)
- Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
- Number of discs: 1
- Formats: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
- Original language: French
- Subtitled in: English, French
- Dimensions: .20 pounds
- Running time: 100 minutes
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
A unfortunate film about a immature Belgian integrate and their baby child, L'Enfant tells a distressing story that is reduction about adore than about a probability of dignified redemption. We fast learn what kind of people Sonia and Bruno are. Sonia (Deborah Francois) is a honeyed teen who has only given birth to Bruno's (Jeremie Renier) child. Instead of visiting her and saying their baby in a hospital, Bruno sublets her unit to "friends" who impact a doorway in her face when she tries to lapse home. We do not know what Sonia does for a living, though we know she's committed adequate to say a tiny unit and keep her cupboard stocked with present soup. Bruno, on a other hand, refuses to take a job. Instead, he leads a squad of thieves who're approximately half his age (and height). Still, Sonia loves him. And Bruno, who might be unqualified of love, enjoys a untroubled advantages of carrying a partner who doesn't design too much. All this changes when Bruno does a unthinkable--he sells their child. He quietly explains to her, "I suspicion we'd have another." Overnight, Sonia changes from a small lady to a sour lady who no longer excuses Bruno's behavior. When he earnings to her unit claiming he loves her, she spits back, "You're lying. You can't assistance it." Not realizing a irony of his possess actions, he afterwards begs her for money. Renier and Francois are challenging actors who communicate feelings with pointed nuances. Though a film is in French, a spectator never feels lost. The subtitles positively help, though a actors are so good that their intonations and expressions pronounce volumes themselves. L'Enfant--a 2005 Cannes leader by filmmaking brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne--is a heartless film to watch not since of any gore or violence, though since of a frailty of a characters and their recklessness to survive. In his query to lapse a child to Sonia, Bruno attempts to turn a improved tellurian being. But a spectator is never left with a compensation of meaningful that he will ever be means to truly redeem himself. --Jae-Ha Kim
From The New Yorker
A child is innate to a span of Belgian lovers, who seem frequency some-more than children themselves. Sonia (Déborah François) is pretty, pained, and underdressed, with extended skeleton and a unwashed laugh. Bruno (Jérémie Renier) is a prodigal and a sparse crook, with a hole where his demur ought to be. He doesn't work, he spends income as shortly as he gets it, and, on a whim, he sells a small boy; a residue of a film, by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, guides us by a issue of his folly. Many of a Dardenne trademarks, informed from "Rosetta," are in place: a dour and unfair backdrops, a discerning though unflamboyant demeanour of a storytelling, and a titillate to excavate though ridicule into a lives and ethics of an underclass. Despite all those virtues, a new film feels laborious—Bruno's actions seem vale and repugnant, fending off a sympathies, and his participation elbows out a some-more honourable cases of Sonia and Steve (Jérémie Segard), a teen-age confederate to his crimes. The film ends with Bruno in tears, though any relatives examination will be distant some-more endangered about a baby, who for some puzzling reason never cries during all. In French.
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker
By Jérémie Renier
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Customer Rating: 
First tagged "family" by Michael Kerjman
Customer tags: adolescence(4), france(3), black market(2), kids(2), baby(2), sex(2), lovemaking(2), europe(2), baby selling, atonement, awards, belgium
Customer Reviews
Most useful patron reviews
18 of 18 people found a following examination helpful.
We'll make another one
By Tintin
At a 2005 Cannes Festival, brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne perceived a Palme d'Or for l'Enfant, their second in 6 years (the initial for Rosetta, in 1999).
The film opens with eighteen-year-old Sonia (Deborah Fran'ois), creatively expelled from a maternity sanatorium and carrying her mint baby, knocking during a doorway of her possess apartment. She is refused admission. Taking advantage of her brief hospitalization, her boyfriend, Bruno (Jeremie Renier), rented a unit for a week to some strangers. This occurrence sets a tinge for a rest of a film. Sonia earnings to a travel where she encounters a crony with a engine scooter who takes her and a tot to accommodate twenty-one-year-old Bruno, who is a baby's father. Bruno accidentally looks during his son, "Jimmy," yet he doesn't compensate too many courtesy to him, as he is in a routine of creation one of his "deals." Bruno lives during a border of society, flourishing off sparse theft, trafficking in stolen properties with a squad of immature teenagers who demeanour adult to him, and cadging Euros from Sonia's Government-issued family allowance. His latest "deal" carrying apparently succeeded, he goes and buys a pleasing baby stroller.
Later, while Sonia stands in line during a gratification office, Bruno takes a baby for a wander in a carriage. While walking, he decides to sell Jimmy to a baby adoption trafficker, and afterwards fast carries out his base-born plan. When he reconnects with Sonia and shows her a money, she reacts violently, and final Jimmy's return. Bruno says simply, "We'll make another one." Sonia is overcome by shock, and faints. Bruno carries her to a hospital, and afterwards disturbed that her vehemence about "the baby" is going to get him in trouble, embarks on a march to collect his son. Bruno arranges for a lapse of a trafficker's money, recovers Jimmy, and takes him behind to Sonia during a hospital. However, a trafficker, accompanied by his goonish bodyguard, final an "indemnity" from Bruno equal to double a remuneration for a botched transaction. To make certain that Bruno understands a earnest of this indemnity, a trafficker's bodyguard beats Bruno, and in a routine takes a few Euros that Bruno had in his pockets, that a trafficker says will be deducted from a sum sum Bruno owes him. The indemnification is so large, Bruno knows that he will never be means to repay. Nevertheless, he valiantly tries, with a assistance of Steve (Jeremie Segard), a member of Bruno's gang, and one thing heading to another, he eventually ends adult in jail.
L'Enfant was filmed in a city of Seraing, a dull industrial suburb of Liege, located on a Meuse River. The film's character is that of a documentary, regulating a hand-held camera that is always on a move, posterior Bruno and Sonia. So many tighten ups and impassioned tighten ups force a spectator into impassioned cognisance with a characters, and furnish a rather claustrophobic atmosphere from that no shun is possible. The film's purgation is amplified by a fact that there is no song in a whole film, usually civic credentials noises.
As always, a Dardennes rest on a ability of their actors to be a tangible characters before personification their parts. The never yield psychological descriptions of their protagonists, yet leave it to a viewers to learn them as they rise on a screen. Jeremie Renier is a lead, as Bruno. Renier was detected by a Dardenne brothers as a teenager, when they featured him in a heading purpose of La Promesse (1996). In L'Enfant, Renier is extemporaneous and natural, simply glorious in his purpose of a depraved Bruno. Deborah Fran'ois, in her entrance purpose as Sonia, is already a constrained actress. Twenty-three babies were used in a purpose of Jimmy, not due to a part's challenge, yet since of a prerequisite for mixed retakes -- babies need feeding and changing, and they can get fractious fast. A doll was used as a substitute during usually one stage during a commencement of a film, where Jimmy is carried by Sonia on a behind of a engine scooter, since of a intensity risk that might have been acted to a genuine infant. The doll's name was "Jimmy Crash."
Bruno, nonetheless physically adult, behaves like a child. He is not incorrigible as many as he is amoral, like a immature animal, vital day-to-day, preoccupied to tomorrow. When he has money, he spends it on a coax of a moment: he buys a pricey baby carriage, costly clothes, or he leases a imagination automobile to take his partner and tot son on a joyride. Bruno seems to know income in a purest form, as currency: a longer it stays in one place, a reduction profitable it is.
On a other hand, Bruno is generous, and above all, honest. When he distributes a deduction of his "deals" to his immature squad members, he is conscientiously honest in vouchsafing them know a accurate volume of any transaction. And he does not desert Steve in a hands of a police, yet willingly goes to a military station, surrenders a stolen income and takes full shortcoming for a holdup. Sonia does not seem to have a clever personality, until she is challenged by a detriment of her baby. Right in a beginning, after Bruno sells Jimmy to a trafficker, we see how motherhood transforms Sonia. For Bruno, it will take longer -- indeed until a finish of a film, following a array of terrible events. Even then, he will not have an epiphany, yet during slightest something in him will change.
"L'enfant" (the child) is roughly faceless, usually a lumpy blue gold with dual tiny, extending hands. He does have a name, "Jimmy," yet he does not know it yet, as nobody speaks to him or addresses him during his initial few days as a tellurian being. Jimmy's start in life does not uncover many promise. He will have a eminence of carrying driven behind from a sanatorium on a engine scooter, yet a helmet, on a drizzling day. He will lift perpetually a feeling of abandonment, and a loathing for flowered wallpaper, remembering a room where his father sole him for a clod of Euros. Will he ever get over his unlucky beginnings? The film's cathartic finale hints during this possibility. The Dardennes might be quiescent per Bruno's and Sonia's future, or miss thereof, yet one feels that they lift their wish for a new commencement in Jimmy.
Bruno and Sonia live in a permanent "here and now." They are like dual cubs, cavorting, rough-housing, laughing, full of life and full of adore for any other. In annoy of their immaturity, there is no doubt that Bruno and Sonia adore any other, and in a end, their adore overcomes their adversity, bringing a murky spark of hope: for a initial time in a film, and in their life. They comparison a murky benefaction in their reconciliation, that could also be a phenomenon of their presence instincts.
Bruno and Sonia live in a multitude that ignores and destroys a children, branch them into border elements, sparse thieves, and misfits, a multitude where crime leads to some-more crime, some-more crime to violence, and so on, finale finally with imprisonment. Is there a solution? The Dardennes seem to answer "yes," and introduce adore and nurturing as a solution.
The Dardenne brothers never tumble into a eloquent or fussy sentimentalism. Their reality, contemptible yet it is, speaks for itself. They are conjunction judges nor moralizers. They uncover us a exploding multitude that has mislaid a bearings, and whose dignified formula has collapsed underneath a weight of steady amicable and mercantile crises. Bruno and Sonia develop in their bland abandoned of both viewpoint and future.
To conclude, a tiny prolongation anecdote. In filming a stage when Bruno and Steve are on a run and find themselves adult to their necks in a Meuse River, Jeremie Renier got into trouble. The cold H2O (which was 42 degrees Fahrenheit) was soiled by industrial oil from a circuitously spark estimate plant, and Renier twice ingested some of it. This landed him in a internal sanatorium for a stomach pumping that evening.
The strength of Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne's film is to have done Bruno and Sonia, both such multitude outsiders, simply as dual tellurian beings, not a dregs of multitude nor bad wretches to be pitied: a conspicuous feat value 4 stars.
12 of 12 people found a following examination helpful.
An Emotional Ride
By thornhillatthemovies.com
I can roughly pledge we have never seen a film by dual Belgian filmmakers, a Dardenne Brothers. Why? Their films accept greatly singular recover notwithstanding vicious regard and a tiny clinging following.
Each of their prior films, from "La Promesse" to "Rosetta" to 2002's "Le Fils" are a journey; we follow a integrate of people over a march of a few days in their lives until a final, emotional, gut-wrenching climax. "L'Enfant" ("The Child"), their newest film and a leader of a 2005 Palme D'Or during Cannes, is no exception.
Sonia (Deborah Francois) leaves a sanatorium with her baby son, Jimmy. We initial accommodate her walking by a streets looking for Bruno (Jeremie Renier), her beloved and a father of a baby. They find him panhandling during a bustling intersection. Sonia learns that Bruno has rent her unit for a subsequent few days (she wasn't going to need it in a hospital, right?), so they bed down during a internal shelter. That evening, Bruno leaves to accommodate with his blockade and sell her a stolen video camera. Bruno's categorical source of income is a organisation of sparse thieves, all children, who take things, sell them to him and he sells them to a fence. Any income he earns is fast spent; on a new jacket, food if he is hungry, a let car. While watchful in line for benefits, Sonia tells Bruno he should take a baby for a travel by a park. Bruno realizes all can be sole for a price. He takes a baby to accommodate his fence.
The Dardenne Brothers have a singular style. They fundamentally set a camera in a center of a stage and record a dilettante actors vital their character's lives, holding Realism to an extreme. During one scene, we watch Sonia pierce by her tiny flat, creation a crater of present soup for her dinner. This substantially sounds agonizing to some. Why would we wish to watch this? Why should you? The filmmakers comprehend this process of filmmaker literally thrusts us into a center of these lives, we turn active participants. The unchanging bearing to these clearly paltry events helps us to turn a partial of their world, watching small sum and nuances throughout. During a same scene, we see Sonia is insane during Bruno, a time explosve prepared to explode. When this fundamentally happens, we comprehend how insane she unequivocally is.
As we watch these dual really immature people pierce by their lives, surviving, barely, a story is engaging and emotional. But a many noted impulse in a Dardenne Brothers' film always comes during a end. Everything until that indicate has been in support of a final moment. Because we spend so many time with Bruno and Sonia, a final impulse has to be a really noted one. We have to feel all of their pain, a work, a heart pain and mistakes heading to that point. In "L'Enfant", a final moments are really good, yet they are not as noted as a prior films from this duo. Good, yet not outstanding.
"L'Enfant" isn't so many about a child Bruno and Sonia share, yet about a other children in a film and their turn of maturity.
"L'Enfant" is a really good film, improved than most, and estimable of your time. Search for it during your internal eccentric museum or repertory house. Hopefully, we will afterwards confirm to knowledge their other, somewhat improved films on DVD.
9 of 9 people found a following examination helpful.
A Brave Film Masterfully Made
By Grady Harp
The essay and directing group of Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne once again have combined a film that is harsh, formidable to watch, and tremendously honest and rival to opt out for happy endings. These dual artists conduct to residence bizarre issues, play them as picturesque as possibly and them concede a assembly greeting to finish a tale.
Bruno (Jérémie Renier) and Sonia (Déborah François) are dual teenage drifters who have usually given birth to a baby 9 days ago. They live off Sonia's gratification and Bruno's sparse burglary crime squad of immature kids, namely Steve (Jérémie Segard) who take for Bruno, Bruno sells a prohibited items, afterwards pays a boys. Bruno is not a obliged boy, preferring not to get a job, yet wanting to buy costly garments to demeanour good. His response to Sonia is one of witty devotion (they are apparently really many in love) yet he appears to have small connection to their new son Jimmy. In an act of recklessness Bruno sells Jimmy on a Black Market for substantial money. When he tells Sonia she is ravaged and throws mim out. Bruno creates hit with a source to whom he sole Jimmy, gains a baby back, usually to learn that other thugs are now concerned and direct 5000 Euros from him since of their detriment in a scam. Bruno convinces Steve to dedicate some thefts with him on motorbike and they are followed with catastrophic effects for Steve. Bruno faces his inhuman behaviors and a demeanour in that he accepts shortcoming and a consequences trustworthy yield a really heartrending finale to this story.
The film is shot with an eye for picturesque plcae and mood. It is roughly unfit for a assembly to accept a function of these teenagers and that seems to be one o a goals of a writers and directors. Life has a spectrum of events - happy, silly, absurd, disastrous, monstrous, tender, forgiving - and these are all incorporated into a form of an doubtful story that becomes so genuine it is unpleasant to watch. The immature actors are superb, totally credible, and really genuine in their description of a several celebrity aspects of their characters. The film is played yet a low-pitched measure (except for a impulse of Johann Strauss on a automobile radio) and a cinematography by Alain Marcoen is greatly aligned with a story. L'ENFANT might not be a film many viewers will find 'entertaining', nor was it meant to be. This is a courteous and unfortunate film and one of a top quality. In French with English subtitles. Grady Harp, Aug 06
