The filmmakers tend to confuse flatness with realism. For the most part, the characters are unappealing and the brothers treat them coldly.

| Feb 13, 2021

The Dardenne's are unafraid to show the darkness of humanity.

| Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 14, 2020

In a Hollywood thriller, we might encounter a conniving wife in league with a vicious gang of con men. Here, the Dardenne brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc, contrive a richer scenario.

| Jan 23, 2018

The noirish ambience (if not style) underscores the heinousness of those who traffic in human lives for their own ends-a central tenet of the Dardennes' work.

| Aug 15, 2017

Still, what initially promises to be a morality tale doesn't really have any messages to speak of about immigration, womanhood, poverty, humanity or anything else for that matter.

| Oct 7, 2015

Lorna's Silence is not only a beautiful film, but also one that moves the filmmakers' art forward a small step or two -- a tectonic shift for these art cinema old faithfuls.

| Aug 2, 2015

The results are no less emotionally gratifying or personal than in [the Dardennes'] previous films, but Lorna's Silence is mysterious and mystifying in an entirely new way.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 2, 2015

A soul-crushing weight rests upon Lorna (Dobroshi), the Albanian-immigrant heroine of the Dardenne brothers' stunning proletarian character study.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 17, 2011

Heaven on earth for the Dardenne Bros., the poets of European mercantile desolation.

| Aug 29, 2011

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Apr 4, 2011

Redemption drama loses the plot.

| Original Score: 3.0 | Dec 29, 2010

It's a classic Dardennes morality tale set in the grim, hard-scrabble world between working class hardship and black market hustle...

| Jan 9, 2010

a moving portrait of emotional and social awakening

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 7, 2010

This masterfully crafted tale of muted female survival in a quietly brutal world, the film unfolds petal by petal, as it stirringly reveals mere inklings of the character's haunting inner emotional and psychological turmoil.

| Dec 31, 2009

Once again brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne explore the moral predicaments that arise from economic desperation.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 25, 2009

It's Lorna's evolution (charted through Dobroshi's uncompromising performance) that makes "Lorna's Silence" worth seeing. But the Dardennes shouldn't have been so deliberately stingy with the details of her story.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 13, 2009

...less a character study than the apparent breaking-in of a camera crew on a sad and sordid life.

| Original Score: 89/100 | Nov 7, 2009

By scorning accessibility, the filmmakers unwittingly throw out the baby with the bathwater. After all, what's authentically human, if not high drama?

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 15, 2009

Mirthless and deliberately paced, there's still enough in the well-acted Lorna's Silence to make it worth listening to.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 9, 2009

The Dardennes have once again captured the harsh reality of the modern underclass while also injecting a note of moral hopefulness into what might have been a bleak and heartless tale.

| Original Score: B | Oct 6, 2009