‘The most difficult word to say is “Cut!”’: an audience with Cannes conquerors Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne | Movies

Earlier this year, the Cannes film festival saw a triumphant recent appearance from European cinema’s kings of social realism and social conscience. The Dardenne brothers, Jean-Pierre and Luc, now 74 and 71, presented a movie that is one of their very best: Jeunes Mères or Young Mothers, a deeply compassionate, knowledgeable drama about a home for teen mothers or mothers-to-be in the directors’ home town of Liège in Belgium. These adolescent women are faced with the existential question: is it sensible to give their infants up for adoption, or a fundamental loss of moral courage?

The Dardennes have become known for intensely naturalist performances and handheld camerawork, radical simplicity and clarity. They have won the Cannes Palme d’Or twice, firstly for their drama Rosetta in 1999, about a adolescent woman who must look after her troubled mother in a trailer park – starring the then nonprofessional teenager Émilie Dequenne – and secondly the terrifying, faintly Greeneian drama L’Enfant or The Child, from 2005, with Jérémie Renier as a petty criminal who gives his own baby away to a “private adoption” broker and then desperately tries to get it back.

A string of other awards followed and with the imminent UK release of Young Mothers, which has incidentally earned them yet another prize at Cannes for their bulging silverware cabinet – for best screenplay – I logged on for a Zoom chat with the legendary brothers who, despite their films’ seriousness, are always infectiously genial, like cheerful academics.

So how did Young Mothers come about, I ask? Luc replies: “We went in to research a maternity home with the idea of one character. Then we saw the life there, the five or six young mothers. And this was new for us, to envisage a whole group. We were attracted by it. We didn’t want to do a choral ensemble piece. We wanted each to have their story. And we decided that there would be light at the end of each tunnel. Sometimes a fragile, feeble light. But we didn’t want failure.”

And the directing? I pointed out to them Martin Scorsese’s memory of seeing for the first time a movie by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and wondering which of them shouts “Action!” and “Cut!” The thought makes both brothers giggle. “Sometimes it is my brother who says ‘Cut!’,” says Luc, laughing, “… and sometimes it is I!”

“The most difficult word to say is ‘Cut!’,” interjects Jean-Pierre, laughing as well, and Luc adds: “Sometimes it can be our assistant who says it.” Having rehearsed extensively and intimately with the actors, the Dardennes are often positioned away from the camera, watching on the monitor and the responsibility for the cut will be devolved to this assistant.

As for the actors: often, the Dardennes have worked with nonprofessionals, such as Dequenne and Renier, who then developed professional careers; and sometimes they worked with established A-listers such as Marion Cotillard, who got a best actress Oscar nomination for her performance in the Dardennes’ workplace drama Two Days, One Night. Are the large names directed differently to the amateurs?

‘We wanted each to have their story’ … a scene from Young Mothers. Photograph: Christine Plenus

“In terms of this rehearsal, it’s the same for all,” says Luc. “It’s then that we find a movement for the camera and start adding detail. Where it differs is how we talk to each actor. A professional will have their technique and they will know how to use it. They will naturally use their technique. They have to learn, to some extent, to forget it. You will have a situation where you tell an actor: OK, you light up a cigarette, you drink a coffee and read the newspaper. A professional will do it quite sleekly, but those little actions might completely overwhelm a nonprofessional.”

Jean-Pierre says that improvisation is not what they do: “We rehearse a lot, we rehearse four to five weeks, but we leave some sort of leeway because the actors don’t have marks on the floors. No scene is ever exactly the same. The key is imprecision.” He adds, grinning: “What is the Italian word? Sfumatura! Hazy nuance and shade.”

This approach is most essential in working with children and teens who are so essential to the Dardennes’ films, such the radicalised schoolkid in Young Ahmed from 2019, and the exploited refugees in Tori and Lokita from 2022. Luc says: “There is something of themselves that is always there. And we want that. If they just want to look down, they will look down and they are resisting the camera. Our model is Abbas Kiarostami. It’s how he directs. He lets them be.”

‘All too short a life’ … Émilie Dequenne in Rosetta. Photograph: RONALD GRANT

I raise the sorrowful and painful subject of Dequenne, an iconic actor for the Dardennes who gave a radiant performance at the age of 17 in Rosetta and died of cancer in March at the age of 43. Jean-Pierre says soberly: “It is very hard for us to talk about Émilie. Our very first memory that we will always cherish is when we first shot with her with the whole crew. On the very first day, we felt that the crew was drawn to her. Émilie bound us together and even she wasn’t aware of it. And then she went on to have a very varied and accomplished career and … all too short a life.”

The political and social dimensions of the Dardennes’ films are often discussed, but less so their fierce, almost eerily spiritual elements; they are gritty parables of good and evil, with an almost Catholic emphasis on mother and child. Luc approaches the subject warily: “I would call it spiritual realism. We work from a social situation. But we don’t push it forward. It’s as if God is disappearing and it’s art’s responsibility to show, to lead, to guide. But never making a sermon.”

Then there is the question of who guided the brothers themselves to work together in film? In school, says Jean-Pierre, there was a teacher who introduced them to cinema; he does not dwell on fact that the teacher was a priest: “He had a cine club and showed us many films: Bresson, Godard, Truffaut, Bergman, Bertolucci, Ken Loach. This triggered something. But at 17, we still didn’t think, oh one day we will make films together.” The vital moment came as they were working as assistants to the French theatre and cinema director Armand Gatti, who one day simply left these twentysomethings in charge while he went off to Germany to direct a play. The Dardennes picked up the clunky, but serviceable Sony Portapak cameras and made rough-and-ready documentaries in wobbly black and white.

But it is at the end of our conversation that Jean-Pierre and Luc reveal their most compelling influence: their formidable mother, Marie-Josée. Luc says: “Our mother was a singer in the village. An operetta singer, singing in the Walloon dialect. And that she did for 20 years. She liked to sing for us. She sat us all down in front of her on the couch. She did a performance – I like to say she was our first actress!”

Marion Cotillard in Two Days, One Night. Photograph: Allstar

The Dardennes also have two sisters: Marie-Claire, a theatrical props maker, and Bernadette, a nurse. During their childhood, the Dardenne brothers’ great passion, like so many other teen boys of that era, was for their tape recorder. Luc used it to record radio commentaries on the local football team he loved, Standard Liège, and the cheeky brothers sneakily recorded family conversations by hiding the device under the dinner table and playing it back afterwards – an early example of documentary realism. And their father, Lucien, was he influential? Luc replies: “He was very severe. He was in the resistance during the war and afterwards an industrial designer in steelworks. He painted a little in his youth.”

Finally, I ask if they may ever make films separately, as the Coen brothers do? The question makes Luc laugh: “No! But our only disagreement – and you have to have one – is that I have an idea for a film but he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want it. He’s scared because it’s a historical thing. It’s about the Spanish Inquisition. But …” Luc shrugs and Jean-Pierre shrugs as well, amiably. I point out that Robert Bresson made historical work. “When Bresson does a historical film it’s not his best …” says Jean-Pierre quickly. “But his Trial of Joan of Arc is very powerful,” replies Luc.

Perhaps the Dardennes’ film about the Spanish Inquisition will never get made. Their togetherness is of paramount importance. As Luc puts it: “It’s good to be together to resist criticism – to face the critics together.”

Young Mothers is in UK cinemas from 29 August