Shadows Contactless: Friday 11 September 9pm: SBS on Demand + Messenger: THE UNKNOWN GIRL

 

A young doctor in her first senior job prevents a trainee from answering an after hours call at the clinic as she judges it not to be an emergency. The next day police officers arrive to request the surveillance tape from the door. It shows one of the last actions of a woman who was murdered that night as she sought refuge at the clinic. Sounds like the start of a thriller. It is, kind of. This 2016 film from les freres Dardenne concentrates on character, the character of the doctor who seeks to know the deceased woman posthumously. Still sounds like a thriller.

Well, it is and it isn't. The Dardenne brothers have for decades been serving up the grimmest of social realism for decades from their base in Belgium and here they stretch out to genre to see what they can find out about their characters. The good news is that it works. We do get a hefty load of realist gravity but we also get a kind of lightening effect from the performances and an openness to cinema beyond the indignant eye of the usual fare. It is grim but it's also entertaining.

The Dardennes always cast perfectly and they place at the centre of the intrigue the luminous and compelling Adele Haenel who keeps the centre heavy but vital. (Actually, if you like the central perofrmance of this film I'll just slyly direct you to Portrait of a Lady on Fire which you can see on Stan. It's an extraordinary two hander which topped my favourite films of last year.)

If you like your verite don't worry about the thriller aspects, they're kept in rein. If you like your thrillers, don't worry, you'll enjoy getting to know the lady in the centre of the frame.

Join me.

MIFF Session #16: THE UNKOWN GIRL

Jenny, a young GP in a small Belgian town, is taking her intern through some tough criticism. He froze at an urgent moment and while she's being firm but fair he's taking it hard. The door buzzer sounds but she stops him responding, saying that all their patients know it's after hours and need a little tough love themselves. He storms off soon after. The next day she is stopped by two detectives who want to see the practice's security camera footage. A woman was found killed nearby. And there she is on the recording, the one who pressed the buzzer.

Racked with guilt, Jenny takes a still from the video and begins her own investigation. The victim carried no identification. Beginning with those closest to home she passes the image around but no one can identify the girl. Going wider, she establishes that the victim had been a sex worker and had just come from a client before her death. This takes her into some very dodgy territory, both police and local thugs warn her off the trail. But she's too haunted and can't stop.

Adele Haenel plays against her delicate youth with a hard seriousness. She lets us know the struggle that Jenny has been through just to get to this lower link on the medical food chain. When she is threatened with physical violence her surprise at her vulnerability feels genuine. And as her driving guilt over the death morphs into more of her sense of responsibility we understand the strength she is gaining from it. Gravity ensues.

The Dardennes have been my go to struggle-core team for a few years now (I was very late to them but now think they just have no competition). They've taken the grey-day look of social realism and found riches within it so that their visual style is both signature and unobstrusive. Their observation of the delicate balance of life at the bottom is always compelling because it's always driven by performance performance performance. That's what takes these unsmiling tales of life from grim-oop-north grinds into essential dramatic cinema. That's what we have here.