Are there many better young actors currently working in film than Jérémie Renier? No, not the star of The Hurt Locker (that's Jeremy Renner), but the Belgian actor discovered at age 15 by the Dardenne brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc, in La promesse (1996). That masterpiece — the first in their widely imitated realist style — set the stage for their latest, and fifth film in the cycle. Like Renier's character in the earlier film, Lorna (Arta Dobroshi, another great find) is embroiled in a scheme involving illegal immigrants, only she's among the exploited. An Albanian, she's secured Belgian-residency status through a sham marriage to Claudy (Renier) — a junkie, and hence an easy mark for murder by her handlers. Guilt, however, threatens to break her silence. More plotted than usual and to its detriment, the film has its own silence broken by a Beethoven sonata played under the final scene, another distracting element in a work of near-greatness.
