Tori and Loki­ta – first-look review

Human traf­fick­ing has fig­ured fre­quent­ly in the films of the Bel­gian broth­ers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dar­d­enne since their 1996 break­through, The Promise. It’s a sub­ject suit­ed to their phi­los­o­phy, or philoso­phies – spir­i­tu­al, polit­i­cal, aesthetic. 

The human com­mod­i­ty speaks to the imper­illed sta­tus of the soul in the mate­r­i­al world, while reveal­ing the trans­ac­tion­al web that struc­tures soci­ety, in par­tic­u­lar the black-mar­ket ecosys­tem which sets the bound­aries of their rig­or­ous­ly cause-and-effect nar­ra­tives, shot hand­held in unob­tru­sive­ly long takes which often tail the char­ac­ters around Belgium’s less-fash­ion­able urban envi­rons. (They lit­er­al­ly fol­low the money.) 

Tori and Loki­ta, about a teenage girl and pread­o­les­cent boy from Benin on the out­skirts of Liege – him with papers, her with­out – is the lat­est vari­a­tion on this theme. We find this time a more despair­ing Dar­d­ennes’ film than the redemp­tive hits of Cannes com­pe­ti­tions past: Tori and Loki­ta is at once more bru­tal and more maudlin. Has the world changed or have they changed?

We open with Loki­ta (Mbun­du Joe­ly) close-up, look­ing anx­ious, as an immi­gra­tion offi­cial skep­ti­cal­ly ques­tions the sto­ry of Tori (Pablo Schils) being her broth­er. Tori, who was at risk in Benin, has legal sta­tus in Bel­gium (which still means he needs to be back to his dor­mi­to­ry by 10pm), but the Bel­gian bureau­cra­cy doubts Loki­ta is real­ly his sis­ter. For us, how­ev­er, there’s no doubt­ing their bond. They sing each oth­er lul­la­bies, and Tori shows Loki­ta the draw­ings he made at school, and they care for each oth­er. Tori keeps the pills for Lokita’s pan­ic attacks, and Loki­ta shoul­ders the worst of their work in the shad­ow economy.

No film­mak­er since Bres­son has depict­ed cash trans­fers with more speci­fici­ty and care than the Dar­d­ennes. Here, Loki­ta has hands from all direc­tions reach­ing into her pock­et and pulling her this way and that. The smug­gler that brought her over is keep­ing a close eye on his invest­ment; her moth­er on the phone relies on her remit­tances for her oth­er children’s school fees. The Dar­d­ennes, with the pre­ci­sion of their sto­ry­telling, teach you to watch Lokita’s finances as close­ly as she has to. When­ev­er she parts with a bill, you know who gave it to her, and what for. 

Loki­ta needs her papers to get legit­i­mate work, as a home health aide – hard­ly a bright future giv­en the home-care industry’s noto­ri­ous exploita­tion of migrant labor, as the Dar­d­ennes sure­ly know, but bet­ter than run­ning drugs. Tori and Loki­ta make their deliv­er­ies on behalf of a chef in a piz­za restau­rant, who switch­es out their phones for burn­ers and sets aside left­overs for them to take home at the end of the night. 

If they want the left­overs, they have to ask him for them, every time. If they want a box to take the food home in, they have to ask for that, too. Every inter­ac­tion is fraught with knowl­edge of their pre­car­i­ty and lack of lever­age: the piz­za chef also pays Loki­ta for extras, for which he sets the rate, and the terms.

We know who Loki­ta and Tori are – we see them with each oth­er, in the rare moments when they’re off the clock. Every oth­er rela­tion­ship they have is strict­ly trans­ac­tion­al, with peo­ple whose true, ugly faces are revealed only grad­u­al­ly, as Loki­ta dis­cov­ers that the only peo­ple will­ing to make room for her in Euro­pean soci­ety are the peo­ple who see a way to use her. The Dar­d­ennes out­line a social indict­ment with famil­iar clar­i­ty and an undimmed faith in the puri­ty of famil­ial love – the puri­ty, if not the power.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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