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L'Enfant (The Child)

Name: L'Enfant (The Child)
Genre: Drama, Romance, Crime
Released: March 24, 2006
Duration: 100 min
Rating: 87
Cast: Déborah François, Jérémie Renier

2006

METASCORE

Universal acclaim based on 34 Critics

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USER SCORE

Universal acclaim based on 83 Ratings

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8.7

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8.7	Your Score
8.7	User Score Universal acclaim based on 83 Ratings

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L' Enfant (The Child)

Movie Details & Credits

Sony Pictures Classics | Release Date: March 24, 2006 | R

Starring: Déborah François, Jérémie Renier

Summary: Dispossessed twenty-year old Bruno lives with his eighteen-year-old girlfriend Sonia 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]

Director: Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne

Genre(s): Drama, Romance, Crime

Rating: R

Runtime: 100 min

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Awards & Rankings

8	#8 Best Movie of 2006

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Metascore

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Critic Reviews

100

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. Read full review

100

Jami Bernard

Powerfully uplifting precisely because it's so horrifying. Read full review

100

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. Read full review

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. Read full review

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. Read full review

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. Read full review

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. Read full review

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User Reviews

TomC.

Apr 14, 2006

This movie was a moving experience! Will stay wiith me for quite a while. No doubt who 'The Child' that the title refers to really is!