Tori and Lokita

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dar­d­enne have spent their career telling sto­ries about char­ac­ters liv­ing on the mar­gins of Bel­gian soci­ety, and their 10^th fea­ture Tori and Loki­ta takes us back to the ter­ri­to­ry of their debut La Promesse, as it explores the exploita­tion of undoc­u­ment­ed African immigrants.

That 1996 film was told through a white Bel­gian pro­tag­o­nist – with Jérémie Renier’s Igor being the first Dar­d­ennes lead to find him­self at a moral cross­roads – but the broth­ers have shift­ed their per­spec­tive here to fol­low two chil­dren from Cameroon and Benin. They may be the most vul­ner­a­ble char­ac­ters these film­mak­ers have yet giv­en us.

Tori (Pablo Schils) and Loki­ta (Mbun­du Joe­ly) met on the boat when they were smug­gled into Europe, but Loki­ta pos­es as Tori’s old­er sis­ter to aid her appli­ca­tion for a work per­mit, and to ensure the pair can stay togeth­er. She is forced to sub­stan­ti­ate that fic­tion in a series of harsh inter­ro­ga­tions by the author­i­ties that often leave her pan­ic-strick­en and in tears, but while the famil­ial bond may be false, these mar­vel­lous young actors make us ful­ly believe in it.

Loki­ta is anoth­er qui­et­ly res­olute Dar­d­ennes hero­ine in the tra­di­tion of Roset­ta or The Silence of Lor­na, while the more tena­cious Tori reminds us of The Kid with a Bike as he runs and cycles deter­mined­ly across town. At one point, his impul­sive deci­sion to race across the road unwise­ly draws the atten­tion of the police, an unnerv­ing reminder of how pre­car­i­ous their legal sta­tus is.

Things get even more dan­ger­ous for Tori and Loki­ta when they spend their Fri­day nights sell­ing drugs for a deal­er who oper­ates out of the kitchen in an Ital­ian restau­rant. This is their only means of mak­ing mon­ey to send to Lokita’s fam­i­ly, but in doing so she is sub­ject­ed to the dealer’s sex­u­al impo­si­tions, and the pair must avoid the smug­gler (a briefly chill­ing Marc Zin­ga) who demands what­ev­er cash they are car­ry­ing to repay their debt.

In this film there are vul­tures every­where and all these kids have in the world is each oth­er, so when they are sep­a­rat­ed the ten­sion instant­ly ramps up. Nobody does ten­sion quite like the Dar­d­enne broth­ers. As in so many of their films, there’s a moment in Tori and Loki­ta when a char­ac­ter makes a fate­ful deci­sion and the nar­ra­tive sud­den­ly snaps into focus, cre­at­ing stretch­es of the dra­ma when you’re hold­ing your breath and feel­ing a roil­ing sense of anx­i­ety in the pit of your stomach.

It’s only at this point that you realise how deeply invest­ed you have become in the fate of these chil­dren, and how pow­er­ful­ly the Dar­d­ennes gen­er­ate empa­thy by cre­at­ing authen­tic char­ac­ters with sim­ple desires and invit­ing us to live in their world for a brief time. The Dar­d­ennes’ style has bare­ly evolved since their debut fea­ture, but it’s so potent it doesn’t need to. What does need to evolve is the way we treat the kind of peo­ple they make films about. More than 25 years after La Promesse, the Dar­d­ennes have had to make anoth­er film about the way immi­grants in Europe are aban­doned by the state to be exploit­ed, abused and dehu­man­ised. Plus ça change.

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

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