The unknown girl
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The unknown girl |
| Original title | La fille inconnue |
| Country of production | Belgium , France |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 2016 |
| length | 113 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 6 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne |
| script | Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne |
| production | Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Denis Freyd |
| camera | Alain Marcoen |
| cut | Marie-Hélène Dozo |
| occupation | |
| |
The Unknown Girl (Original title: La fille inconnue ) is a Belgian-French drama film directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne from 2016.
action
The young doctor Dr. Jenny Davin the old Dr. Habran, who will be retiring; in a few days she will start a new position as a doctor at the Kennedy Medical Center. She has an intern, Julien, who fails on the penultimate day of her substitution period with a child with a seizure. She reacts critically; When the doorbell rings that evening long after office hours have ended, she forbids him to open it. Julien goes and does not return. In the evening she is greeted by her future colleagues with a small celebration, and the next morning she receives a visit from the criminal police. A young woman was found dead not far from the practice and they want to check the practice's surveillance camera. It turns out shortly after that the young woman had rang Jenny's doorbell. This reproaches itself, even if she did not know the black woman. Julien has meanwhile decided to give up the medical profession. Jenny also makes a decision: she will become Dr. Continue Habran's practice and not take up the position at the Kennedy Center.
Jenny begins researching the woman's identity. She goes to the place where the body was found and shows the photo of Ms. Julien and Dr. Habran. Habran has treated several black families, but does not know the woman. The autopsy of the woman shows that she must have resisted, so a murder cannot be ruled out. Jenny now shows the woman's photo to patients. She sees from young Bryan's reaction that he knows something, but he refuses to say anything. He later confesses to having seen her. She must have had oral sex with an old man in a trailer before leaving. The trailer belongs to Lambert junior, who reacts irritably when Jenny talks about her research. She learns from Lambert senior, who was the young woman's customer, that it was a prostitute that his son had organized for him. She is from Liege , where punters can find her in a certain internet café . Lambert junior was unable to bring her back to Liège because of an accident. Jenny goes to the internet café, but neither the cashier nor two men in the café recognize the young woman.
Jenny seeks out Julien, who is now helping his grandmother out in the country. She learns that the medical profession reminds him of his abusive father and that he no longer wants to practice it. Jenny builds it up; in fact, Julien resumes his studies shortly afterwards. Meanwhile, Jenny's research puts her in danger: She is stopped and threatened by two men from the Internet café, who turn out to be pimps; she should never ask questions about the girl again, otherwise something would happen to her. She also sees Bryan again and tries to get him to talk. Shortly afterwards, his parents go to her and tell her to leave Bryan alone. You want to look for a new family doctor for the family. The police also ask Jenny to leave the case to them, as their research has made the drug environment restless, which makes the investigation difficult. They name Jenny the name of the girl she has wanted to know for so long: allegedly it is Serena Ndong from Gabon .
Jenny gets a surprise visit from Bryan's father. He admits to having seen the young woman on her way home from the client. He followed her, and his son saw her. He approached her and agreed a price. She fought at the canal and he ran after her, where she fell in a construction site and hit her head. He thought she was passed out and left. When Jenny tells him that the young woman died of her blood loss, Bryan's father first gets angry and then tries to hang himself in the practice toilet; in the end he faces the police. A little later the woman from the internet café is with Jenny's. She thanks her because the young woman was her little sister. She said nothing because she was afraid of being found by her former pimp. Her sister had false papers because she wasn't even 18. Her real name was Felicy Kumba. The woman leaves and Jenny remains shaken. However, the next patient is already waiting and Jenny devotes her full attention.
interpretation
The film has a criminalistic plot, but what it's really about is the question of how to deal with guilt, and about atonement through loving attention to other people, through active charity.
The film is made quite unspectacular. Very simple pictures, no artificial beauty. Very simple milieu, the furnishings of the rooms and the exterior shots show something ugly. There is also no film music used that would soften this sober impression.
At first, the protagonist, the doctor Jenny Davin, is sure of herself. Cool and thoughtful, she explains to her intern Julien that he has to control his emotions if he is to become a good doctor. She forbids him to answer the door when the doorbell rings and says reproachfully that you have to draw lines. Because her practice has been closed for an hour. The next day it turns out that she was guilty, she did not answer the door when a persecuted young woman rang the doorbell and is complicit in her death. Later she confesses to Julien that she actually wanted to open the door but didn't do it to prove him right, to demonstrate her superiority.
Not only the young African deceased is unknown, the European Jenny doesn't know herself at the beginning either, but she slowly gets to know each other in the course of the film. She becomes humble, lets go of all self-righteousness. She feels guilty and wants to atone for her guilt. She does this by searching for the identity of the murdered, persistently, with all her might. In addition, she devotes herself - possibly even more intensively - to her work, her patients. She devotes her whole life to the service of others. That's why she turned down the offer to take a good job and make a career at the Center Kennedy, where private patients are treated. Instead, she takes on a practice in which she mainly deals with people from the lower classes. So she is confronted with precarious circumstances again and again and helps her patients as best she can. Objective and sober, but very careful and affectionate.
Her “therapeutic” endeavors for her fellow human beings are successful, she “heals” them from their guilt by making them face the truth and stand by it: Bryan tells her the truth, Bryan's father confesses to her what he did and confronts the police, the intern Julien can bring himself to tell her about his childhood and is thus able to realize his lifelong dream of becoming a doctor. And finally, the sister of the dead reports, who was persuaded by Jenny's visit to the Internet café to no longer deny her sister, but to take care of her grave, which will finally have the real name on it.
Why tell the truth when it doesn't help the dead anymore and only plunges the confessing into misery? That asks Bryan's father Jenny. And she says: So that you can get rid of your pain (he had psychosomatic pain) and because the girl is not (yet) dead as long as we are occupied with her internally all the time (“Elle n'est pas morte parce qu'elle est encore dans nos têtes. "). It's about giving the dead girl back at least a little bit of dignity, paying her final respects. To give her back her name and to be able to mourn for her without or beyond the guilt feelings.
Jenny only succeeds in “healing” the others because she is aware of her own guilt and she confesses to the others. It does not place itself above them, but meets them at the same time. This is made very obvious in one scene. When Bryan's father confesses his deed to her, she first “stands over him” (he crouches on a chair or on the floor, she stands), which he cannot bear. He yells at her, whereupon she sits down next to him, on the same level as him. Before that, too, it was about the same topic: She looks at him openly when he speaks, which he cannot bear because he feels it as arrogance and condemnation. He wants her to turn away, and she does.
It remains to be seen what effect Bryan's father's statement will have with the police, whether he will be jailed for murder or only given a suspended sentence for using violence and failing to provide assistance, whether or not he will really destroy his family's life. (One could think of the end of the other Dardenne film "L'enfant", where the young father ends up in prison, but the young woman stands by him and they cry together.) But his pain and his attempted suicide show how desperate he is and that he could not live a happy life if he continued to hide the truth.
Wonderful one of the last scenes of the film: how Jenny hugs the sister of the dead after she has confessed the last bitter part of the truth: She was glad that her sister was "gone". This hug is a final symbolization of the brotherhood or sisterhood that is the focus of the whole film.
production
In April 2015 it was announced that Adèle Haenel would take on the leading role in the new film The Dardenne Brother. The unknown girl was filmed in and around Liège , including Seraing , between October and December 2015 . The costumes were created by Maïra Ramedhan Levi , the film construction was done by Igor Gabriel .
The film premiered on May 18, 2016 at the Cannes International Film Festival . It was released in Belgian cinemas on October 5, 2016 and in French cinemas on October 12. In Germany it was shown in cinemas from December 15, 2016.
Awards
The film ran in Cannes in 2016 in the competition for the Palme d'Or . In 2017 he was nominated for a César in the category Best Foreign Film and received a nomination for a Prix Lumières in the category Best French- Language Film.
Web links
- edp film review
- Review from mirror online
- FAZ review
- Review of the SZ
- The unknown girl in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Certificate of Release for The Unknown Girl . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF).
- ↑ Kevin Jagernauth: César Winner Adèle Haenel To Lead Dardenne Brothers Next Film "The Unknown Girl" . indiewire, April 23, 2015.
- ^ Aurore Engelen: Les Dardenne tournent La Fille inconnue . cineuropa.org, October 21, 2015.