Few directors have shaped the European Arthouse cinema of the past decades as much as the Belgian brothers Luc Dardenne and Jean-Pierre Darden, who won the Golden Palme in 1999 with their big breakthrough “Rosetta” (and could win the most important price at the film festival in Cannes only six years later with “Das Kind”). At that time, the title figure was followed with an extremely mobile hand camera, often from behind, relentlessly observing how the young girl strikes through a harsh world. Since then, the brothers have repeatedly varied this approach:
Sometimes they focused on a duo (“Tori & Lokita”), sometimes moved towards Melodram (“Lorna's silence”), sometimes shot with drama stars instead of layperson (Marion Cotillard even received an Oscarnomination as the best leading actress for “two days, one night”. Your new film “Young Mother“Especially acts like a reminiscence to the documentaries that the DardeNes made before moving to the feature film subject. The film is more likely to be observed than that he is dramatically exhilarating – and he also focuses on four very young mothers, whose similar fate varies less than increasingly redundant.
Perla (Lucie Laruelle) does everything to move her friend to a future together – but is not even part of the ripe for a father role.
In an accommodation for minor women who are still pregnant or have just received a child, different fates meet: Julie (Elsa Houben) was once as drug addicted as her friend Dylan (Jef Jacobs), who has now started a bakery. Together they try to stay away from the drugs and look after their child together. But Julie always threatens to relapse.
Perla (Lucie Laruelle), on the other hand, tends to anger and try to persuade the minor and completely immature baby father Robin (Gunter Duret) into a future together. Ariane (Janaina Halloy Fokan) wants to release her baby for adoption, because she never wanted to get it. Just the pressure of her alcoholic mother, who wants to use the baby, especially as a second chance for her own screwed life, prevented an abortion. After all, there is Jessica (Babette Verbeek), who feels a huge pressure before the birth of her own daughter, to find out why her unknown mother gave her away …
25 minutes per young mother
The topics will certainly not go out to the Darde brothers. Too many social grievances and injustices still have to be denounced, and too much social faults are discussed. Is the topic of teenage pregnancies in Belgium particularly up to date and therefore the Dardnes is dealing with it? Or did you just want to draw attention to a problem area that is often overlooked behind the latest, perhaps hot -discussed topic? In any case, the brothers chose a form that is quite unusual for them, because “Young Mother” looks like an episode film in view of its four main characters. With a length of just over 100 minutes, this means that each of the four young mothers appears about 25 minutes, not in one piece, but interrupted by the other fates. There are very few overlaps, for example with group scenes in the common accommodation.
The Dardnes design small arches for every figure. The respective fate, the background, the problems and the goals are concealed – and after sometimes harsh setbacks, each of the episodes ends more or less conciliatory. Perla, for example, is initially still with her child's father, or at least she believes that. A shared apartment seems to be the basis for everything, but at first it does not work with the rental agreement, then the friend suddenly ends the relationship. Perla's only anchor is her big sister, who also endures Perlas again and again that occurs and gives her accommodation and support in the end.
Ariane (Janaina Halloy Fokan) is put under pressure by her own mother to keep your baby – Ariane knows very well why that would not be a good idea.
Many episodes are a little schematically designed, especially in view of the brevity of the time that the Dardnes have available for each of their figures. Sometimes they even look a little cursor and hasty. Without the necessary narrative preparation, the conflicts between the young women and their environment sometimes escalate, but then dissolve again as quickly. Because the time to tell more detail and above all more precisely is simply missing. Accuracy was always one of the great strengths of the Dardnes. With often difficult -to -bear precision, they took a close look at their characters, put them in a social structure and observed how the injustices of society too often unjust, sometimes criminal behavior.
There is hardly anything of this sharpness and this hardness of her gaze in “Young Mother”. The episodes often appear astonishingly harmless, and do not necessarily dissolve in a Hollywood pleasure, but end up with hopeful. This time, too, the dramatic intolerance, the pressure, which is often hard to force, with which the Dardennes usually mostly confront their characters and force them to impossible moral decisions, can only be discovered. Instead, “Young Mother” looks like a typical problem film that describes an unquestionably important topic without really hurt. Only in some scenes manages to develop the emotional power that made their best films so special. In any case, the Dardnes were no longer as conciliatory and a bit arbitrary as here.
Conclusion: In their new film “Young Mother”, the Dardenon brothers take on the subject of teenage pregnancies. This time they focus on four main characters, which leads to shortened characterizations that only develop emotionality in a few moments for which the Belgian directorate duo is actually known.
We saw “Young Mother” at the Cannes Film Festival 2025, where he celebrated its world premiere as part of the official competition.