The Child

Herald rating: * * *

It's a shame that this is the first of the features by the formidable Dardenne brothers to make it back on general release. For, unlike The Promise and the majestic, masterful The Son of a few years back, in which a carpenter takes on as an apprentice a youngster he later discovers to be the boy who killed his son, The Child is a desperately bleak film which seeks to give a vicious twist to our notions of parental tenderness but lacks the slightest shred of redemptive intent.

Its two main characters are Bruno (Renier, the lead in The Promise) and Sonia (Francois), who inhabit the margins of a drab industrial town in French-speaking Belgium, where he scratches out a living as a petty thief and lives in a shack by the grey river that oozes through the town centre. Sonia returns from hospital after giving birth to their child, to find him disconnected from his new role as a father and irresponsible about how he will provide for them.

Bruno's not bad at making money but he's even better at blowing it. When he does spend it on his fragile family, he does so by doing things like taking a drive in the country in a borrowed sports car.

Sonia is stunned when Bruno, left in charge of the kid for an afternoon, announces that he has sold it. His easy-come, easy-go attitude extends even to his flesh and blood, and the rest of the film follows his attempts to recover his child and Sonia's trust.

It's hard not to have a viscerally ethical response to these characters but that's not what makes the film a disappointment. The Dardennes maintain such a studied detachment that the film never achieves anything approaching a satisfying narrative arc. To say that it starts out depressing and goes downhill may be to state the obvious but it's hard to discern any organising dramatic intention here.

The film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes last year and has been praised by some. For me, it fatally fails to engage.

Verdict: A grim and irredeemably drab slice of life on the margins, this Belgian film challenges even the most optimistic spirit.

Cast: Jeremie Renier, Deborah Francois
Directors: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Running time: 95 minutes
Rating: R13, contains violence
Screening: Academy