L'Enfant deals in matters of (organized) crime and punishment without compromising its emotional acuity or spiritual purity.

| Apr 6, 2020

L'Enfant shows a world that remains under the radar for most people, yet proves that growing up - however long it takes - is anything but child's play.

| Sep 26, 2017

Unfolding in real time on the scruffy working-class streets of industrial Belgium, this harrowingly intense odyssey charts Bruno's desperate search for redemption.

| Nov 1, 2007

Absolutely terrific.

| Jun 24, 2006

What is astonishing, and most admirable, is the way the filmmakers manage to create sympathy for this pathetic loser.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 25, 2006

An observant and effective study in character and setting, suitably grave and distinctively realized.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 13, 2006

Every act in the film has a mythic resonance.

Full Review | May 12, 2006

No one is likely to leave L'Enfant unaffected by the Dardennes incisive exploration of the consequences of a world where some of its citizens have found a way to rationalize, and even ignore, what was if not unimaginable, at least unforgivable.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 21, 2006

A gritty slice of real life, relentlessly in focus, though always humane.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 21, 2006

Like all the Dardennes' films, L'Enfant is a vivid, Dickensian report from the most dispossessed precincts of society.

| Apr 20, 2006

Bruno is a classic character from the pen of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, the Belgian filmmakers who find beauty and redemption in the direst of circumstances.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 14, 2006

The miracle of the filmmakers' work would seem to be the perfectly struck performances of the leads.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 14, 2006

Here is a film where God does not intervene and the directors do not mistake themselves for God. It makes the solutions at the ends of other pictures seem like child's play.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 14, 2006

Without a lot of overheated action, the consequences of Bruno's behavior cloud the next few hours of his life. The character is a surprise as both a dramatic creation and a human being.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 14, 2006

The film belongs to Jeremie Renier and Deborah Francois.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Apr 13, 2006

Renier is a tiger, clawing into the character with teeth filed to razor sharpness only to have the weight of his morally heinous decisions dull them to cub-like nubs.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 12, 2006

Everything about L'Enfant feels devastatingly real.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 7, 2006

For all the squalor and extremely upsetting subject matter, you can't take your eyes off the screen. The Dardennes have a gift of finding a sort of beauty in ugliness.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 7, 2006

Even for a useless criminal, Bruno is just not a compelling personality. Unreadable lumps generally aren't.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Apr 7, 2006

Deceptively simple, stripped to the bare necessities, it quietly dramatizes the consequences of lying, cheating and stealing in a way that takes your intelligence for granted.

| Original Score: A- | Apr 7, 2006