The Son (2002)

Admirers of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne will find much to like in The Son, the Belgian brothers' third feature film. Like their previous works, the highly acclaimed La Promesse and Rosetta, The Son is a stylistically rigorous, emotionally wrenching drama of moral reckoning. The first half-hour may cause a lot of head-scratching because of the Dardennes' deliberately elliptical storytelling, but once the central dilemma snaps into focus, the movie becomes unusually gripping. Dardenne regular Olivier Gourmet gives a standout performance as Olivier, a carpentry teacher who encounters his child's killer many years later. Now a teenager fresh out of juvenile detention, the student (Morgan Marinne) does not know who Olivier is -- and Olivier is not eager to fill him in either. What Olivier chooses to do with his new charge becomes the stuff of this movie's suspense. True to form, the Dardennes disregard the demands of plot and generic convention, letting their character-driven drama unfold organically. Although their vérité-style camerawork might cause seasickness with some viewers, it also abets the movie's hypnotic naturalism. The brothers display respect for their unglamorous subjects, capturing them in moments of seeming unimportance. Focusing our gaze on the mundane, the Dardennes attune us to the momentousness of the trivial. Infused with religious feeling, The Son ends with a gesture of unannounced decency that perfectly sums up the Dardennes' cinema of dignity. ~ Elbert Ventura, All Movie Guide