She is Lokita, the big sister. Him, Tori, the little brother. At least that’s what they try to make Belgian immigration investigators believe in order to be able to stay together. In reality, Tori and Lokita are just friends. Two young isolated migrants who arrived from Africa and between whom a close bond has been forged. Their European dream has turned into a nightmare between the smugglers to whom they owe money, the family back in Africa to whom it must be sent and the drug world, the only way for them to earn the precious euros that everyone claims them. They are torn from all sides and their only refuge is their unwavering friendship.
If only one name were needed to talk about Belgian cinema, we would only mention this one: Dardenne. The two brothers are so often rewarded on the Croisette that they could have seats in their name at the Palais des Festivals. Only three years ago, the Dardenne brothers won the prize for directing at Cannes for Young Ahmad. Today, the great Belgian masters of cinema-vérité are back in force with Tori and Lokitaa new chronicle of social misery crowned with the Cannes 2022 anniversary prize.
Like their superb Lorna’s Silence (screenplay prize at Cannes in 2008), Tori and Lokita therefore speaks to us of illegal immigration. We always find the Dardenne paste, the one that we have been applauding for three decades now and which continues to prove that more is the enemy of better. Luc and Jean-Pierre go to the simplest without encumbering themselves with detours and finery to stick to the reality of the characters they write, again and again filmed as closely as possible.
Captivating simplicity
It is with a cold and violent frontality that they introduce us to Lokita, in the middle of an interrogation session to prove her relationship with Tori. The scene, without cutting, as the Belgian scenario writers like it, is at the limit of the sustainable one. Oppressive for the heroine, this opening scene is just as trying for the viewer who feels cornered with the young Lokita. The tone is set, we are going to experience an hour and a half of almost uninterrupted dramatic intensity with captivating simplicity.
While in the childit was Olivier Gourmet’s back that the Dardenne handheld camera was tirelessly pursuing, in Tori and Lokitashe clings to the profile of the characters, thus tracing the contours of distress.
The Dardennes’ pen is always sharp. The adventures to which they subject their two heroes are linked together, leaving the viewer just enough time to catch their breath. It is a painting of the exploitation of human misfortune that is made for us in a form close to the diptych. The story first focuses on Lokita and makes Tori exist through the affection she feels for him, then things are reversed to put forward, in a second time, Tori and the love he door to this stranger who has become like a sister.
The story thus inevitably arouses empathy towards this heartfelt brotherhood while the duo of directors takes us into the implacable reality of their daily life as migrants. The finale has the effect of a blow that we had not seen coming, of a hardness and a coldness to which the spectator was not prepared. The two brothers are decidedly without pity for our poor hearts.
The main characters are, once again, interpreted by non-professional actors that the Belgian brothers knew how to direct with a masterful hand. Pablo Schils and Joely Mbundu are moving at will, and the complicity between the two carries the scenario further than one could have hoped for. In the role of Tori, Schils overflows with charisma and floods the screen with his energy.
True to themselves, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne offer with Tori and Lokita a new variation of their sleek style, stripped even, rid of intrusive cuts and invigorating original bands to go to the essentials and get straight to the point. This piece of Belgian goldsmithery bluntly shatters all our preconceptions, good and bad, about illegal immigration.