La Promesse
(1996)
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La Promesse is the story of fifteen year old Igor, who helps his small time crook father run a scam illegally employing immigrants on building sites. But when one of the workers is fatally injured, Igor promises to look after the man's wife and child - a promise that changes Igor's life forever... |
Borrowing its uncompromising style from the British school of realism, this harrowing rite-of-passage story was partly inspired by Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. Depicting Europe as a soulless capitalist subjecting the underdeveloped world to a new form of slavery, the film focuses on the feud that develops between an apprentice mechanic and his immigrant-trafficking father over how to help the widow of an African worker who falls to his death. Consistently echoing Ken Loach, co-directors Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne pull no punches in this grimy study of human misery, saving their fiercest body blow for the very last scene.