Rent The Child (2005)

real life getting close at you - The Child review by CP Customer

This movie comes across more like a documentary, following two young people closely through a part of their life. We don't hear much about where they came from or what their future looks like and are thrown right into the story. The Belgium industrial town of Seraing, once affluent, now declining, sets the scene for Sonja and Bruno, as they struggle to come to terms with being parents. Allthough circumstances seem to leave no alternatives, as Bruno sees it, his choices take him down a route he didn't want to go. The sheer fate of their young son Jimmy makes you want to reach out and intervene.

This movie will appeal to lovers of alternative cinema.

A child of our times. - The Child review by RhysH

Two harrowing scenes at the centre of this film, Bruno (Jérémie Renier) in a deserted apartment sells his new born child for adoption, in a deserted garage he buys his child back, we see no other person. Renier plays these two scenes with considered understatement, we know his anguish without having it thrust at us. It is an outstanding performance, met entirely by Deborah François as the mother of the child, Sonia. The Dardenne brothers always get remarkable performances from their young casts.

On a day out the couple play around with each other in a desperate attempt to recapture the physicality of childhood which mentally they have never left.

The film ends in tears, no sobs, and through the anguish the Dardenne brothers invite you to predict the future, despite all Bruno and Sonia had been through I clutched at a glimmer of hope.

Washed and Unready - The Child review by griggs

The Child aims for gritty social realism but never quite gets its hands dirty. Everything looks too neat, too staged — the kind of poverty you could wash off between takes. For a story about people living rough by a river, the cast seem suspiciously well-scrubbed.

The Dardennes fill the film with long, wordless stretches of walking and drifting that promise meaning but mostly test patience. What should feel raw immediate plays more like filler dressed up as art. There are flashes of something stronger — a modern Dickensian tale of hardship and redemption — but the film never digs deep enough to make it land.

The acting’s fine, the production’s fine — and that’s the problem. Earnest and polished, sure, but strangely bloodless. You can see why it impressed the festival crowd, yet it left me cold.