“There is an American photographer who, every year, took portraits of his wife and her sisters,” Luc Dardenne tells me. “As they get older in the photographs they huddle together more. They become physically closer. They hold on to each other more.”
So Luc and his brother Jean-Pierre have come together in this fashion? They are closer now than they ever were?
“Ah, it’s like…” Jean-Pierre says and, as his English runs out, makes ambiguous gesture with both thumbs and both forefingers.
They need money from each other?
“No. No. Ha ha ha!” I mean they are scared.”
If mortality is nipping at the film-makers' heels they are putting a brave face upon it. Almost everybody who has interviewed Jean-Pierre and Luc – directors of such realist masterpieces as L'Enfant and The Son – has noted the pleasing contrast between the sobriety of the films and the gaiety of their creators. The Belgians could hardly be friendlier.
“Ah we remember Ireland so well,” Luc, the younger at 62, says merrily. “Many years ago we shot this film in Derry. It was very important to us.”
The brothers did, indeed, help shoot Armand Gatti's experimental Nous étions tous des noms d'arbres (sometimes titled Writing on the Wall) in that city back in 1982. Jean-Pierre received one of several cinematography credits. Luc was listed as an assistant director.
“I remember the poverty of the families – the Catholic families – in the Bogside. And they had so many children,” Jean-Pierre, now 65, says. “It was terrible. And the position of women surprised us. And the dominance of the Church? I remember the Protestants saying the Pope has red socks because he is a communist. You know? Ha ha!”
A swerve in their careers
We mention this not just to wrap ourselves in the flag. The incident marked a swerve in their careers. Raised in Liege, both received decent degrees at university – Jean-Pierre in drama, Luc in Philosophy – before setting up a production company named Derives in 1975. They initially worked on a series of documentaries that, though well-received, failed to make them any sort of name.
“When we worked in Ireland, that brought us together in a new way,” Luc says. “Armand Gatti was a sort of spiritual father. When he was gone we decided to carry on the work together.”
The Dardennes we know took, however, another decade to form themselves. The filmmakers regard their first two dramatic features, Falsch and Je pense à Vous, as false starts. The style that came to win so many prizes – a mobile camera telling simple stories about ordinary people – finally came together with The Promise in 1996. Their next movie, Rosetta, unexpectedly won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. In 2005, when L'Enfant triumphed at the same event, they joined that select group of filmmakers with two Palmes (nobody has three).
“It just came together,” Jean-Pierre says. “We filmed chronologically from the first day. We then shoot the first shot of the first scene. The technical team come to us and ask. In some films the technical team can take over. Not on our films. We have rehearsals. We have a month to five weeks of rehearsal on the actual sets. So when the cast turn up they know their lines.”
That sounds pretty rigorous. Does everybody get the same treatment? Was Marion Cotillard put through the same trials on the way to her Oscar nomination for their Two Days, One Night?
“Oh yes. We don’t care whether they are well known or not.”
Second cut
Success does not seem to have gone to the Dardennes brothers' heads. At this year's Cannes Film Festival, something most unusual happened. Their latest film, The Unknown Girl, received what are politely referred to as "mixed reviews".
The picture stars Adèle Haenel as a young doctor who sets out to identify a young immigrant who died after – through accident rather than neglect – being refused treatment at her surgery. A few critics found it slow. Others felt it a tad contrived. Did the boys get a huff on? They did not. The brothers re-entered the editing suite and cut a noticeably trimmer version for release.
“This is the first time we have done that,” Luc says. “When we went to Cannes reactions were mixed and certain friends drew attention to the fact that the film concentrated more in the doctor’s day than her emotion or her psychology.”
They seem neither hurt nor set back by the experience.
“We felt the rhythm of the film was wrong. Why did that happen? We think that is because for the very first time we made no break between the film and the editing. Others can maybe do that. We cannot.”
They both shrug. They both laugh. Maybe they move a little closer together.
- The Unknown Girl is in cinemas on December 2nd
