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88Renier’s performance is the best thing in the movie, although all the actors, cast partly for their faces, are part of creating this desperate world.
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75Ultimately, this is not one of the Dardennes' masterpieces. They've made a few of those, but the effect of Lorna's Silence is more modest. It leaves the audience with neither a sense of uplift nor devastation, but, rather, with something more akin to intellectual appreciation.
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91A stunning study of one desperate woman's conscience.
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88The Dardennes resist the expected cliches: The climactic scenes gather force and purpose and the movie seems headed for a breakthrough of some sort, but then it glides softly and unexpectedly to a halt.
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80Like earlier Dardenne films, Lorna’s Silence is naturalistic, yet this one, beautifully shot in 35 mm film by Alain Marcoen, achieves a poetry of bereftness.
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88On a deeper level, the Dardennes' film offers a portrait of a fragile yet determined woman set on making a home for herself in the world, even as that world unravels before her eyes.
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80Lorna's sudden change of heart is a pointed example of what the Dardenne brothers' movies are all about. Capitalism may seem at times like a raging river, but every day, all over the world, people try to make it flow in the opposite direction.
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63Lorna's Silence doesn't work, but it's a beautiful misfire.
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100A gritty, deceptively low-key, no-fuss, no-frills movie of consistent originality and surprise in which suspense arises straight up from the heroine's evolving character.
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67Echoes long after the movie ends.
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83By Dardenne standards this plot is pretty pulpy and unconvincing, but I rather enjoyed watching them attempt to twist it into an existentialist pretzel.
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90Lorna's Silence is engrossing and powerful, which may be just another way of saying it's a film by the Dardenne brothers. If it falls a bit short of the standards of their best work, that is only because it is not quite a masterpiece.
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75Upbeat it ain't, but when the light fades from the final frame, there remains something unusual in the Dardennes canon – the possibility of an escape from futility's clutches, and a reason for hope that might, just might, be more than an illusion.
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100The androgynous Dobroshi is in nearly every scene. She has an exceptional screen presence that brings authority to her portrayal of a woman seeking redemption. As for the Dardennes, they prove yet again that nobody does human frailty the way they do.
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75If you’re new to the Dardennes, Lorna’s Silence will serve as a fine introduction.
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63It boasts strong acting and a nice dose of suspense.
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75Among the Dardennes' more accessible films, despite a drawn-out finale that still doesn't quite satisfy.
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80The film doesn't pack the same cumulative wallop as the brothers' earlier work, but its low-key artistry, immaculate construction and fine performance by relative newcomer Arta Dobroshi should rouse the usual fest acclaim and arthouse interest.
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75Watching Lorna's attempt to balance self-interest and empathy can be heartbreaking. If Lorna's Silence as a whole doesn't rank among the Dardennes's best, it does follow the money to moments and characters that are unforgettable.
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75This isn't just another crime story, and it would be misleading to suggest that it has anything to do with stylish gunplay, exhilarating car chases or brutal fistfights.
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80Something between a love story and a religious morality tale. The hauntingly ambiguous last scene, in which Lorna finds a place of temporary respite from the economic forces that have determined so much of her life, may be the saddest happy ending I've ever seen.
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While the Dardennes may be moralists, they are also makers of thrillers: The story within Lorna' Silence is built on tiny increments of tantalizing details, meted out in penurious droplets and with chest-tightening tension that suggests that what the brothers wanted to be when they grew up were boa constrictors -- Belgian boas, with degrees in Marxist theory.
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The Dardennes retain a company of returning players: Jérémie Renier, Fabrizio Rongione, and Olivier Gourmet. Such loyalty is rare and touching.
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Lorna's Silence feels like a refinement, even a repetition, of earlier themes. But the brothers are repeating themselves at such a high level that the redundancies are more than welcome.