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L'Enfant (The Child)
Sony Pictures Classics


8.6

based on 34 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 26 votes
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FILM:

MPAA RATING: R for brief language

Starring Jérémie Renier, Déborah François, Jérémie Segard, Fabrizio Rongione, and Olivier Gourmet

Dispossessed twenty-year old Bruno (Renier) lives with his eighteen-year-old girlfriend Sonia (François) in Seraing, an eastern Belgian steel town. They live off Sonia's unemployment benefits and the panhandling and petty theft committed by Bruno and his gang. Their lives change forever when Sonia gives birth to their child, Jimmy. (Sony Pictures Classics)

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Foreign
WRITTEN BY:	Jean-Pierre Dardenne Luc Dardenne
DIRECTED BY:	Jean-Pierre Dardenne Luc Dardenne
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: August 15, 2006 Theatrical: March 24, 2006
RUNNING TIME:	95 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	Belgium / France
LANGUAGE(S):	French (with English subtitles)

Golden Palm, 2005 Cannes Film Festival

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

The Onion (A.V. Club) Noel Murray

L'Enfant is intended as a pointed critique of pop culture's celebration of arrested adolescence. The title could refer to Renier's baby, Renier himself, or even the gang of schoolboy robbers that he's gathered around himself.

100

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

The Belgian directing brothers deal with themes they have made their own: the difficulty of being moral in an amoral world and the grinding, unforgiving nature of reality for those forced by poverty to live on the margins of society. These are not easy films to experience, but they are uncompromising and unforgettable.

100

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Astonishingly vivid. The illusion of reality is so nearly complete in this magnificent French-language film by the Belgian filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne that the screen becomes a perfectly transparent window on lives hanging in the balance.

100

TV Guide Ken Fox

Throughout this raw, often brilliant drama, the Dardennes refuse to judge these deeply flawed characters. They instead maintain a moral objectivity that ultimately leaves room for the possibility of redemption, no matter how dire the sins committed.

100

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Powerfully uplifting precisely because it's so horrifying.

100

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

One of the greatest films of recent years.

100

Newsweek David Ansen

Harrowingly intense odyssey.

100

Premiere Glenn Kenny

For all its seeming simplicity, this is an emotionally and intellectually complex film that holds the viewer in a grip as tight as any classic thriller you can name.

100

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Whether the title refers to the baby or the thief remains an open question, and the viewer is left to decide whether the theme of redemption should be perceived in Christian terms. This builds to a suspenseful climax, and as in Hitchcock's best work, that suspense is morally inflected.

100

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Here is a film where God does not intervene and the directors do not mistake themselves for God. It makes the solutions at the ends of other pictures seem like child's play.

100

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Stephen Cole

Few directors working today make films with the grace and magisterial power of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne's best work.

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

Thanks to a combination of fluid camerawork and careful pacing, the Belgian writer-directors have produced a compelling narrative that sounds, if not a cautionary note, a worried one.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

The brothers have given us another treasure. Once again they have made a drama of redemption, and once again they convince us that it is possible.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

Renier and Francois give deeply affecting performances that help soften the film's harsh blows. But only in the compassionate eye of the Dardennes do these three children achieve a state of grace.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Doesn't feel so much like a movie as a glimpse into the extraordinarily messed-up life of a young man about to make the simple yet life-changing realization that actions have consequences, and that other people matter, too.

Chicago Tribune Michael Phillips

Like all the Dardenne s' films, L'Enfant embraces a peculiarly ascetic brand of what, in other filmmakers' hands, might seem like cheap melodrama.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

L'Enfant begins with the birth of a child, but its real concern is the moral rebirth of a man.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The arrival of closing credits feels like a trap door. The film is over, and, suddenly, we have to leave these people. The directors make no guarantee for their futures, but the strength of their filmmaking inspires you to hope for the best.

Christian Science Monitor Peter Rainer

Sonia may seem happy-go-lucky at the start, but grief steels her. It makes her grow up very fast. She becomes a kind of heroine in the course of the film, which ultimately owes its stature to her presence.

Portland Oregonian Marc Mohan

What makes the Dardennes' films so powerful is their refusal to judge, positively or negatively, their characters.

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

The Dardennes know how to build a scene for maximum tension: you yearn to find out who bought Jimmy, and whether his fate lies with a childless couple or an organ mill. But because they make moral thrillers, what matters isn't only actions and events but their emotional, spiritual and psychological costs.

Washington Post Ann Hornaday

Like all the Dardennes' films, L'Enfant is a vivid, Dickensian report from the most dispossessed precincts of society. But the film concludes on an optimistic note, at least for the Dardennes. It's still the worst of times, the filmmakers seem to suggest, but we're still capable of humanity, if not hope.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

Above all, this is an action film--or, better, a transaction film. It's not just that the Dardennes orchestrate an exciting motor scooter purse-snatching and a prolonged hot pursuit. L'Enfant is an action film because every act that happens is shown to have a consequence.

New York Magazine David Edelstein

The Dardennes' most accessible film. Their handheld camera catches tiny flickers of emotion that few filmmakers come near; you feel as if you're watching the movements of a soul.

Variety Scott Foundas

Those masters of small-scale realism, Belgian brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, have created yet another beautifully acted, exquisitely observed morality tale in The Child.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

As Dardenne films go, with their slow, minutely observed journeys from despair to faint hope, L'Enfant is a horror movie of sorts, and for a few minutes at least, a kind of thriller.

Dallas Observer Rob Nelson

Tough as it is, L'Enfant nudges both its protagonist and its audience toward unlikely affection. Tough as it is, L'Enfant commands our care by practicing what it preaches. No wonder the brothers call it a love story.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

It is an observant and effective study in character and setting, suitably grave and distinctively realized.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Sean Axmaker

What it lacks is an intensity, a passion at the center...It is, nonetheless, a lovely and often powerful film.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

For all the squalor and extremely upsetting subject matter, you can't take your eyes off the screen.

New York Post V.A. Musetto

It's expertly directed in a low-key, naturalistic way that brings to mind French auteur Robert Bresson. It's also emotionally forceful and contains heartbreaking performances.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

It makes sense that L'Enfant has been hailed as a masterpiece, since a masterpiece is what it's trying, in every unvarnished frame, to be. If you wandered unknowingly into the film, however, you would see this: a stark, fascinating, and naggingly detached character study.

The Hollywood Reporter Ray Bennett

The film clearly wishes to explore the topic of children having children, but it only inspires a great desire to smack them both.

The New Yorker Anthony Lane

There is something willed and implausible at the heart of L’Enfant, beginning with the child himself--the first non-crying, non-hungry infant in human history, let alone in cinema.

The average user rating for this movie is 8.6 (out of 10) based on 26 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

R. G. gave it a9:
First of all the movie plays out more realistically than every movie that says it's a realistic portrayal. The theme is as old as time, but the way it's done is just a breath of fresh air in cinema. there are no judgements being placed on any person in the movie, even though we disagree with every action Bruno takes. It's the simple way the camera observes the characters and the audio which has no music but just sounds, that makes this movie stand out. I found it a little frustrating in the beginning, but I started to think and it's a very reactionary movie. I wonder how the second viewing of the film would be; subtle things keep poping up in my head as time passes.

Nadie gave it a10:
This movie portrays innocence in the most dramatic way. The acting is flawless and represents young people without education as they are. Very moving and well told. For me, the best movie of the year.

Josh C gave it a10:
This film goes deep into social crevices without entertainment blandishments (a mellifluous score, the huge acting, the faux-literary contortions). Yet still earns a chill of recognition. This movie is a tremendous kind of me-against-the-world picture whose perceptions are life-sized and surprising in their humanness. In L'Enfant, the screenplay isn't making choices for these people; every one of Bruno's bad decisions springs from his poor, desperate judgment. Unlike the maid in Babel, he's a stupid person you can relate to. To that end, its realism is staggering.

Scott B. gave it a9:
A fantastic story of love, desperation and how explosive things can get when the two collide.

Chad S. gave it an8:
Before the incident, these young Parisians act as if they'd be at home in a trailer park if they had the money for a RV. But then the husband does something unforgivable, and the emotional age of the mother is brought up to speed. What was plural(in reference to the characters' demeanor), now becomes singular, and the dual meaning behind the film's title is unveiled. "L'Enfant" is a story about arrested development. Although the docu-drama approach to "Le Fils" is greatly missed(this film is shot more like "La Promesse"), the ambiguity remains, albeit later in the game. In "Le Fils", we're not sure about the carpenter's interest in the young boy, and in "L'Enfant", an act of contrition might indeed be an act of self-interest. "L'Enfant" is a very good film, but it's not the equivalent of "Le Fils" and "Rosetta".

Glenn B. gave it a7:
Superbly acted and directed.A breath of fresh-air amidst the usual multiplex dross. I consider myself fortunate to have seen it.

[Anonymous] gave it an8:
Showing the underbelly of Belgium in all it's bleakness.

L'Enfant (The Child) Sony Pictures Classics

L'Enfant (The Child)
Sony Pictures Classics