Movie Review: The Unknown Girl

The Unknown Girl *** ½ / *****

Directed by: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne.

Written by: Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne.

Starring: Adèle Haenel (Jenny Davin), Olivier Bonnaud (Julien), Jérémie Renier (Bryan's father), Louka Minnella (Bryan), Christelle Cornil (Bryan's mother), Nadège Ouedraogo (Cashier at the cybercafé), Olivier Gourmet (Lambert's son), Pierre Sumkay (Monsieur Lambert), Yves Larec (Doctor Habran), Ben Hamidou (Inspector Ben Mahmoud), Laurent Caron (Inspector Bercaro).

 

There are few directors who can claim to be as consistently good for as long a period as time as the Dardennes have. For the last 20 years, they’ve produced a film every three years or so, and almost all of them have been humane and touching – looking at complicated, real world morality, and finding universal truths. They’ve won the Palme D’or twice (for Rosetta and L’enfant), and three of their other films have also won prizes at Cannes. It’s easy to take the brothers for granted, since they seem to do what they do with ease. Their latest, The Unknown Girl, is a slight disappointment – but mainly because it doesn’t reach the usual high quality. That doesn’t mean the film is bad – far from it – it’s just doesn’t have the same impact as films like Two Days, One Night or The Son. It doesn’t even quite reach the levels of previous “lesser” Dardennes like The Kid with the Bike or Lorna’s Silence – which I felt both slowly built to something, so you didn’t quite notice how deeply touching they were until they ended. Not coincidentally, The Unknown Girl is also the most plot heavy Dardenne film – and that is where they fall done the most here. Normally, their films have a very simple premise, and then observe their lead characters as they navigate through the moral quandary. Here, plotting is necessary, and it’s awkward. Also, by the end, you wonder the same thing you do in many Hollywood films – if this film is supposed to be a call to action to have more compassion for the poor or immigrants or people of color, why does it star a white woman in the lead role? Still, it’s a testament to the Dardennes skill – and that of lead actress Adele Haenel that these flaws don’t sink the film.

 

In the film, Haenel stars as Jenny Davin – a young, promising Doctor, who has just accepted a major position, and a prestigious facility that will make her career. She will start the job the next week, and as a result, she will be leaving the small practice she took over from an aging doctor a few more before – she was only ever meant to be there on a transitional basis, but most of the patients are poor, and haven’t gotten new doctors yet. One night, a few minutes after closing, there is a repeated ringing at the office’s doorbell – Jenny’s intern wants to open up and see who it is, Jenny doesn’t want to. The hours are over, and she wants to go home – she’s pretty much done with the practice anyway. It’s a mistake she’ll come to regret the following day when the police show up and want to see the security footage from her office door – and when they do, they discover that the murdered girl they just found was the same girl who rang Jenny’s bell. Had she answered, that woman may very well still be alive. Worse, the police cannot identify the girl – they know she was young, black, and immigrant and a likely a prostitute, but don’t know much else. Jenny becomes obsessed with finding out who she was – and what happened to her. And as a result, she turns her life upside down.

 

As a mystery, The Unknown Girl leaves a lot to be desired. Jenny’s detective work seems to basically be showing a picture of the girl to everyone she meets, and she has a remarkably high rate of finding people who recognize her. One person leads to the next clue, and so on – almost Law & Order style. You get the sense that the Dardennes may be trying to play with you a little bit – they cast two of their favorite actors – Olivier Gourmet and Jeremie Renier – in roles seemingly too small for actors of their caliber, so one of them has to be involved, right? (I won’t reveal how the plot plays out – although after a while, you’ll know – the movie doesn’t really leave too many open possibilities).

 

The movie actually works best when it abandons its plot – in the regular scenes where Jenny interacts with her patients, and tries to help them solve their problems – both medical and not. That is when the film appears more like a Dardenne movie. What makes it worse, is that I can the Dardennes making a great movie about a doctor like Jenny choosing between helping her older, poor patient abandoned by the system, and taking the new, shinier, more prestigious job. That’s all relegated to the background in The Unknown Girl at the service of a more, by-the-numbers mystery. In the end, you do kind of see why the Dardennes felt they needed the missing girl story – there are two powerful, extended scenes – one between Jenny and the suspect, and another between Jenny and a family member of the victim – which really are excellent as actor’s showcases, and are emotionally satisfying. They are also, it must be said, the kind of anti-thesis to much of what makes Dardennes movies so powerful – because they rarely resort to those types of scenes.

 

The Unknown Girl is still a fine film – I wonder if it will play better on a second viewing, when I would be free of expecting something more similar to what the Dardennes have done before, and can enjoy this movie more on its own terms. You really cannot be mad at a movie for not being what you want it to be. Yet, the reason why the Dardennes became the giants of world cinema they are is because they make more thoughtful, and less clichéd than The Unknown Girl.