Young Mothers
Any one of these stories would make for a rich and compelling drama in its own right.
Directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Starring: Lucie Laruelle, Babette Verbeek, Elsa Houben
Released 29 August
8/10
If Pedro Almodovar hadn’t already taken it, Parallel Mothers would make a good alternative title for the latest offering from Wallonia’s foremost laureates of humanist realism, the Dardenne brothers. The thirteenth feature in their garlanded career is an anthology piece, following Jessica, Perla, Julie, Naïma and Ariane, five young women at a supported residential home for teenage mums in Liège, as they take their first faltering steps into motherhood and the very adult dilemmas it entails.
Jessica, the youngest of the mums, is about to give birth and desperate to make contact with her own birth mother who gave her up into the care system. Perla has a tiny baby and wants to build a new home with her boyfriend, fresh out of a young offenders institute. Julie is a recovering addict fighting to get her life back on track with her partner. Ariane is struggling to deal with the demands of her own mum as she prepares to give her child up to adoptive parents. Naïma is glimpsed as she’s leaving the centre, embarking on her own fresh chapter.
Any one of these stories would make for a rich and compelling drama in its own right. As individual strands, you might feel that they fail to dramatically weave together. In particular it’s frustrating that you get to see so little of the women interacting with each other directly. One of the great benefits of centres like this are the opportunities for women to overcome their isolation and find solidarity - to share their experiences as well as the domestic loads of shopping, cooking, laundry and childcare. With a couple of notable exceptions, the women here feel alone in their battles with their histories, their mums, their trauma, their addictions and the bureaucracy.
But as always with the Dardennes, the dramas of these ordinary lives are almost unbearably moving. Perhaps most poignant is that of Ariane, writing a letter to the daughter she gives up for adoption, looking forward to the possibility that they might reunite one day in 2040. At its best Young Mothers impresses with this indomitable hope for a better future.
