The films of the brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are teeming with people being forced to find out whether the bonds that hold a society together are up to bearing their weight. They scramble to keep from falling off the map completely, migrants and orphans and unemployed and laborers just struggling to get by. In movies like “L’Enfant,” “The Kid with a Bike” and “Two Days, One Night,” the Belgian directors ask big questions in intimate, neorealist packages. How do personal circumstances — a person’s job or immigration status or race or economic situation — tangle with bureaucracy and the social safety net? And what do acquaintances, neighbors and strangers owe to one another, just because we dwell alongside one another?
No wonder parenthood repeatedly appears in these films, often as a burden. An adult’s responsibility for their child is the most fundamental obligation. And yet when money is scarce, or the adult was never cared for by their own parent, that bond can be tenuous or troubled. Cycles of poverty, abuse and neglect are hard to overcome.
In the Dardennes’ new film “Young Mothers,” parenthood is the focus. Though the two stick to their observational, naturalistic style for this one, they deviate from their usual single-story structure, instead following four teen mothers living in a state-run maternity shelter. The building is plain and administrative, but it’s clean and organized and safe, and you occasionally get the sense that for some of these girls, it’s the most secure home they’ve had in a long time.
Each of the young mothers has her own story, and aside from living in the same home, they don’t overlap all that much. Jessica (Babette Verbeek), who is in the final stages of pregnancy, is desperately trying to make contact with her biological mother, Morgane (India Hair). Another resident, Julie (Elsa Houben), is a recovering addict training to work in a hair salon. She is excited to marry her daughter’s father, Dylan (Jef Jacobs), but terrified of relapsing.
At the same time, Perla (Lucie Laruelle) has recently reunited with the father of her baby. But he seems uninterested, and as it dawns on Perla that her dreams of forming a family with him may not come true, her depression starts to take over. And there is Ariane (Janaïna Halloy Fokan), who has decided after painful deliberation to give her daughter up for adoption. But her mother, Nathalie (Christelle Cornil), wants to right her own wrongs as a mother and raise Ariane’s baby.
The film cycles through their stories, scene by scene, so they all advance in tandem, and we understand that in the group home every girl is fighting her own battles while also accomplishing the mundane tasks of life: cooking spaghetti for the group dinner, doing laundry, cleaning, learning skills to care for her child. Each girl is treated, by the group home staff and by the film, with loving dignity. They’re all teenagers, too young to be in this situation, and yet they have also been pushed by circumstance into fending for themselves long before this moment — otherwise they wouldn’t be in this shelter. They’ve experienced abuse, poverty, addiction and abandonment. They are determined to do better for their own children: That is what they owe them.
Because of the ensemble structure, each tale is interrupted by another, so “Young Mothers” lacks some of the suspense that powers many of the Dardennes’ other films. Yet that slower pace allows a tenderness to develop, and the tension between the girls’ youth and newfound maternal instincts to emerge. A bit of the child they so recently were still lurks underneath the mature person they’ve been forced to become. Jessica’s longing to connect with Morgane seems almost like an infant’s hungry reach toward her mother, yet there’s an adult’s angry insistence in it as well. Julie is full of a young girl’s hope and a much older woman’s fear. Perla’s belief that her baby’s father will want to be with her is obviously juvenile to everyone but her, yet she also knows how to take care of herself. And Ariane harbors a child’s desire to trust and an adult’s jaded knowledge that her parent is untrustworthy.
This is its own kind of tension, and it is heartbreaking and true. It’s reflected in the older characters as well, two of whom were young mothers themselves. They may very well have been like these girls, forced to make these kinds of choices. Are they glimpses of the young mothers’ futures?
A bit of the way into the film, we also briefly meet Naïma (Samia Hilmi), who has recently finished the shelter’s program and is moving out on her own. The girls celebrate her at a lunch where we see what they might hope for: an apartment, a job as a railway ticket inspector, a home with her baby and maybe a supportive partner.
This is no fairy tale ending, by most movies’ accounts. We don’t really know what future awaits Naïma, or Jessica or Julie or Perla or Ariane. But at one point, Ariane contemplates the moment when her daughter will be her age, and for a second she has hope that her girl’s life will be much better than her own. Perhaps, this time, she’s managed to break the cycle.
Young Mothers Not rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. In theaters.
Alissa Wilkinson is a Times movie critic. She’s been writing about movies since 2005.
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