Tori and Lokita (Tori et Lokita)

 

Directors Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne

TORI AND LOKITA (Tori et Lokita)                       B                                                         Belgium  France  (88 mi)  2022  d: Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne

The only thing worse than sex-trafficking, as depicted in Lukas Moodysson’s Lilya 4-Ever (Lilja 4-ever) (2003), is the human trafficking of immigrant refugees seeking a better life, who are surrounded only by vultures looking for a way to exploit their desperation, becoming a modern day slavery system, where in each case they’re valued only as human cargo worth dollar signs, viewed as subhuman, treated in the most despicable manner, where even the larger society around them perceives them as utterly worthless, as there’s a war being waged on refugees and immigrants worldwide.  It’s a sorry state of human affairs, and this plays out more like a horror film, a throwback to that caged-in feeling of ROSETTA (1999).  Ralph Ellison wrote about the invisibility of blacks in his breakthrough existential novel Invisible Man in 1952, but that same feeling applies to immigrants living on the margins in total darkness, unseen by the surrounding world that never give them a second thought, as they may as well not exist.  The Dardenne brothers are Belgium filmmakers who began their careers making documentaries about labor problems and social issues before turning to make feature films defined by their naturalistic aesthetic of social realism, yet their focus has always been on inequality in society and the sufferings of the poor.   This film looks at the plight of migrants in Europe, a theme also addressed in two recent Aki Kaurismäki films, Le Havre (2011) and The Other Side of Hope (Toivon tuolla puolen) (2017), where they seem to fall through the cracks, not really taken care of by the state, instead they are stuck in a desolate no man’s land territory, drawn into illegal activity to pay debts and send desperately needed money back home, subjects of prey from an omnipresent criminal element that exploits their precarious vulnerability.  Tori (Pablo Schils) and Lokita (Joely Mbundu) are two young African migrants in Belgium played by non-professionals.  Tori, who is about 11, is from Benin and has documents that allow him to stay in Belgium, but he lost his parents in the perilous journey to Europe where he met 16-year old Lokita, who was herself smuggled out of Cameroon so she could send money to her family back home.  They have developed an unwavering friendship, having only each other, as otherwise they are all alone in the world.  The utter absurdity of their situation is that Lokita is subject to deportation, and will only be allowed to stay if she can prove she is Tori’s sister, so the two of them rehearse their stories before the immigration authorities about where they’re from and how they lost their parents, but of course, they don’t have a single document to prove they are related.  When a DNA test is proposed, TORI AND LOKITA - EXCLUSIVE CLIP - YouTube  (1:31), they’ve run out of options, leaving only desperate alternatives.     

While there are other films on the subject told in a variety of styles, like Hubert Sauper’s We Come As Friends (2014), Wim Wenders’ documentary 2015 Top Ten List #4 The Salt of the Earth (2014), Jacques Audiard’s Dheepan (2015), or Joanna Kos-Krauze and Krzysztof Krauze’s Birds Are Singing in Kigali (Ptaki śpiewaja w Kigali) (2017), this one centers exclusively upon the character of the two young protagonists, as everyone else is a faceless entity, shot in the minimalist Dardenne style using a handheld camera from cinematographer Benoît Dervaux that casts an unflinching eye on their daily lives, scrutinizing the details of faces, gestures, and glances.  As the only blacks living in a sea of whites, they develop an intensely personal and profound friendship, allies in a struggle against brutal horrors, where they are exposed to a shady underworld of dangerous men who routinely take advantage of them.  Arguably the angriest Dardenne film, this pits the corrupted innocence of youth against the sociopathic indifference of adults who have no problem subjecting them to barbaric cruelty, accentuating the growing suffering in increasingly inhospitable settings, as it’s all about self-interest, where the tragic circumstances of these young lives are routinely overlooked, viewed as outcasts, where their lives are discarded in the blink of an eye, valued by an uncaring public as utterly worthless and inconsequential.  The struggle to stay alive is living under the pressure of constant threats, as everyone wants a piece of them, from the African gang that smuggled them out of Africa, continually terrorizing them for more money, to her family in Africa that needs more, to the Albanian criminal chef Betim (Alban Ukaj) who uses them to make his nightly drug deliveries.  Alternating between hope and fear, they make extra cash singing karaoke in the restaurant, Tori and Lokita / Tori et Lokita (2022) - Clip 1 (English subs) YouTube (51 seconds), while Lokita is also subjected to the humiliation of routine sexual assaults, where any payment received is viewed as a favor.  A very unpleasant watch, the traumatic and terrifying experience is even worse due to their young ages, yet what options do they have?  A devastating indictment of the immigration system and European democracy, as European countries have routinely shut their borders and doors, turning their backs on these young lives, utterly defenseless human beings who are preyed upon by criminals and lowlifes, a by-product of government cruelty and indifference.  Both happen to be extremely enterprising, where this is a story of an unbreakable friendship, putting a human face on meaningless numbers and statistics, where waves of migrants have been subjected to extreme violence and death, treated in the most inhumane and despicable manner, surrounded only by grim possibilities.     

The impetus for the story were newspaper articles the directors read about how many unaccompanied migrant children come on their own, with no parents, disappearing from emergency shelters and housing groups without a trace, exposing the extreme solitude that they live through, and the illnesses that result from their isolation from their families, concluding that they were falling into a crime and drug network, leading to tortures, and even assassinations of young teenagers, with so many of them ending up dead.  Unlike other Dardenne films, this one actually veers into thriller territory when Lokita is separated from her friend for three months and locked up as a prisoner in a dingy industrial warehouse that houses a secret illegal cannabis operation, framed as a high risk experience in order to receive forged documents, her phone taken from her so she can have no contact with the outside world, with food delivered once weekly, as she is given detailed instructions on how to properly care for these plants, where the irony is the plants are treated so much better than she is.  Distressed and alone, exacerbated by her growing sense of isolation, cut off from everything she knows, she is consumed by loneliness, deeply missing the companionship of her friend, at one point turning off the TV and simply staring at his image.  Tori feels the same way, with Betim expanding his role in running all his drug routes, an inconceivable job for such a young kid, where it’s easy to be taken advantage of on both ends, from the buyer and the seller, forcing Tori to hatch a plan, where the guts and sheer originality to carry off such an outlandish effort defies credibility, yet it’s driven by something we come to understand, as their loyalty and devotion to each other is unmistakable.  While their loving spirit should be rewarded and appreciated, the hardened Mafiosi men they’re dealing with have no interest in sentimentalities, as they’re void of any feelings whatsoever, where money is all that matters to them, a subject that was briefly touched upon in The Unknown Girl (La Fille Inconnue) (2016).  Despite keeping such a low profile, these two are living targets at every stage, having to endure moving from conflict to conflict, where the trials they face are staggering, with no friends or allies anywhere, only enemies who want to use them for their own unscrupulous schemes, while they stay safely in the background, using kids to carry out their criminal enterprise.  Descendants of European immigrants never had it easy, but they could find work and eventually become citizens.  That is not the case with Third World migrants of today in Europe, as they’re simply not offered the same opportunities, where the harrowing abuses of black working refugees in Western Europe are well documented (Are your tinned tomatoes picked by slave labour? | Italy, or Thousands of refugees and migrants suffer extreme rights ...), often living in close quarters packed inside small concrete huts covered with corrugated sheets, where the role of organized crime has only increased.  As a result, their lives are more likely to be short and tragic.  The Dardennes have created a moral drama that rages against social injustice, but its minimalist simplicity undermines any developing complexity, operating more on an emotional level, where viewers can identify with what’s happening to our struggling combatants and loathe the system that ignores their needs, but voters in countries around the world are increasingly growing fearful and following step in a lethal combination of xenophobia and nationalism, turning inward, thinking only of their own, vociferously rejecting outsiders like an invading plague. 

The Unknown Girl (La Fille Inconnue)

Directors Jean-Pierre (left) and Luc Dardenne

 

THE UNKNOWN GIRL (La Fille Inconnue)               B+         
Belgium  France  (113 mi)  2016  d:  Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne

In film after film, the Dardenne brothers provide the gold standard on social realism, using a near documentary format to make spare and cinematically austere films with a social message and moral implications, set exclusively in Liège working class environments, exposing social dilemmas that viewers universally can identify with, revealing the difficult kinds of choices people are forced to make, often risking their economic security to preserve their own humanity, where their insight is usually right on the nose.   While the quality of their films is always high, two time winners of the prestigious Palme d’Or (1st place) award at Cannes, for ROSETTA (1999) and L’ENFANT (THE CHILD) (2005), while also winning The Grand Prix (2nd place) award for The Kid With a Bike (Le gamin au vélo) (2011) and best screenplay for LORNA’S SILENCE (2008), their most recent work included heralded actress Marion Cotillard in Two Days, One Night (Deux jours, une nuit)  (2014), yet one detects a kind of indistinguishable similarity in their films, as they are all made exactly the same way.  Speaking personally, what’s been missing are the transcendent moments that elevated both ROSETTA (1999) and LE FILS (THE SON) (2002) to near religious experiences, films that are comparable to the Bressonian template, where the mechanics of rigorous technical precision lead to a spiritual release, like finding a way out of the labyrinth, suddenly freed from all human limitations, discovering salvation in the most improbable places.  This film attempts to do the same, revealing how hard it is to make moral choices in today’s world, as no one else is interested in lending a helping hand.  Like an accident victim stranded on the side of the road, most would prefer to conveniently drive by and not get involved, something that might have been unthinkable 50 years ago, but times and perceptions have changed, literally altering human behavior.     

Born and raised in the industrial Belgian town of Seraing, the French-speaking Walloon municipality in the province of Liège, the setting of literally every single one of their feature films, the Dardenne brothers originally planned to make this film with actress Marion Cotillard, but due to scheduling difficulties made the earlier Two Days, One Night (Deux jours, une nuit)  (2014) with her instead, choosing another extraordinary French actress for the role, Adèle Haenel, who was involved in an open relationship with French director Céline Sciamma, meeting on the set of her first feature film WATER LILIES (2006), continuing until the Belgian release of this film in October 2016.  Surprisingly the Dardenne brothers re-edited the film after the initial Cannes release, trimming 7-minutes off the film with 32 new edits, in effect streamlining the film, adding greater fluidity, where the visceral pace is one of the distinguishing features of the film, becoming something of a daunting police procedural carried out by a private citizen, ratcheting up the suspense, evoking an edge-of-your-seat style of thriller.  Haenel plays a young, successful physician, Jenny Davin, taking the place of a retiring doctor in a small, neighborhood family clinic as she prepares for a more prestigious position in a larger medical facility with state of the art equipment and the recipient of huge research grants.  As she examines an elderly patient struggling for breath, she is also providing hands-on instructional training to a young intern, Julien (Olivier Bonnaud), where her uncompromising attention to detail leaves him a bit overwhelmed, feeling she is being overly critical, which makes her even more resolute to be precise.  In response, Julien grows more introverted and aloof, which alarms the doctor.  When he freezes at the sight of a young patient having a seizure in the waiting room, she reprimands him, “A good doctor has to control his emotions.”  Working well past closing time, unable to see any more patients, she instructs him to ignore the ring of the outer door buzzer, reminding him, “Don’t let patients tire you or you won’t make a proper diagnosis.”  The following morning, however, the police arrive at her door requesting to see her security video, as a crime took place across the street, where a young woman’s body was found lying dead on the rocks by the river.  Jenny’s conscience kicks into high gear, remembering the late night buzzer, bringing this to the attention of the authorities, as she’s haunted by the thought that the woman might still be alive had she opened her doors, where the remainder of the film feels driven by the depths of her guilt.  

While the video did not capture the incident, police contend she was a young African prostitute, suggesting the woman’s body showed signs of a struggle, where her head was crushed by a blunt object and then left for dead after the perpetrator fled the scene.  Curious about what happened, Jenny examines the crime scene, having to pass through a construction zone to get there, as it was one of the workers who initially discovered the body.  Rattled to the core, she is apologetic to Julien, overly critical of herself for not checking the door, but unable to ascertain the identity of the woman, she has a photograph made from the security video, placing it in her phone, then showing it to Julien and various patients asking if they know her.  Without explanation, Julien bolts from the office, claiming he’s not coming back, apparently rethinking his career path, where Jenny tries to be as supportive as possible, encouraging him not to make a rash decision, yet he’s obviously been affected by the incident.  Similarly, after consulting with the retiring physician she is replacing, she decides to take up his smaller neighborhood practice instead of the more lucrative offer, even though it caters to a decidedly poorer clientele.  While the rhythm of the film is built on a succession of patient examinations, she routinely makes house calls as well, establishing an alternative storyline that requires travel, so she’s constantly on the move, an action that only accelerates when she adds a series of investigative inquiries to her list of things to do, questioning if people have seen the girl, what do they know and what can they tell her?  Based on the impoverished circles she’s exploring, she heads straight into warning signs, where there are dangerous asides, as she’s investigating people who do not like anyone asking questions.  Getting herself deeper and deeper involved, she assumes more responsibility, where even the police warn her to stay out of their business and eventually give her the cold shoulder.  While some will argue the script is overly contrived, as detective work is never this easy, as everyone she meets seems to have some involvement in the matter, but the quickening pace of the film is extremely affecting, as viewers get caught up in her moral quest, finding a name that belongs to a violated body that was simply tossed aside, like it meant nothing, something the police and society at large are routinely indifferent about, particularly when it comes to immigrants and people of color, yet it is precisely this issue that elevates the tension and creates a compelling drama.  Always psychologically complex, delving into the plight of forgotten or impoverished individuals, the Dardennes succinctly humanize this moral issue in ways others can’t or won’t, making this essential viewing.