I’m always excited to see a movie by the Dardenne Brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc. Like Sean Baker and Hirokazu Koreeda, the Dardennes always shine a light on people who deserve more of one: the working class or poverty stricken communities. The Dardenne brothers turn their attention to France’s African immigrant population in Tori and Lokita, crafting a story designed to just break your heart and make you understand the day to day privileges in your own life you can take for granted.
After an intense immigration interrogation, we meet Lokita (Mbundu Joely) and Tori (Pablo Schils) going through their day to day routine in Belgium. Tori, the younger one, goes to school during the day, while Lokita, of working age, tries her best to make ends meet. Tori’s lucky, as he has his immigration papers. Lokita is stuck in horrific limbo, making her take more and more riskier jobs so she does not get deported back to the scary place she came from.
My main reason to go to see movies is to see stories about people and worlds I’ve never seen or heard of before: a vehicle for empathy, as the great Roger Ebert once said. Because there aren’t a lot of directors born out of African migration to Europe, those immigrant stories rarely ever make it to the movies (save one Greek exception). And so the Dardennes do what they do best: shine a light into the darkness to see what’s there. Tori and Lokita is at its best in the first 30 minutes, which outline day-to-day lives of these two friends. Living between worlds means dire consequences await at every bad turn, but the promise of a better day keeps you going forward. And thankfully, Tori and Lokita have each other to lean on, especially Lokita, who needs some sort of anchor to a place that’s rejected her until this point. We also see what type of society exists on the fringes: a cold, calculating, lecherous society using gaps in law to take advantage: unchecked power. So trust is paramount, and Lokita and Tori are at least lucky enough to have found trust in one another to help get by.
But the difference between a great movie and a movie you admire is execution. Unlike the Dardennes’s better stuff, that’s where Tori and Lokita stumbles here and there. The opening 30 minutes is compelling enough to warrant a longer tale, and would give the audience a nice understanding of migrant life in Belgium in a semi-ubiquitous way. The Dardennes instead basically turn the emotional screws, forcing every decision Tori and Lokita make to have cruel, unforgiving setbacks. Their lives really get painted as bleakly as possible, as if the Dardennes didn’t trust their own story so they just went for “90 minute gut punch.” At least the audience gets to see how seemingly innocuous decisions can completely spiral dangerously out of your hands when you have no power, and even friendship might not be enough. Mbundu Joely and Pablo Schils are fine playing our leads, and at least they nail the big finale that’s every bit as compelling as the Dardennes want it to be to make people really understand the plight that awaits some of these, well kids.
So in general, good on you Dardennes. Thanks for the start of what I hope will be multiple movies about modern living as a migrant in Europe. So, Steve McQueen, let’s bring back that Small Axe and carve some new marks into that big big tree of injustice. Someday, I hope, it’ll eventually come a tumblin down.