The Dardenne brothers have represented Belgium in the Oscar race five times over the past 26 years, always with understated, naturalistic films about working-class people. Their latest entry, “Young Mothers,” follows a handful of teenage girls who are pregnant or recently gave birth, living together in a home for young mothers while they struggle with money problems, family problems and addiction problems.
The film premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Best Screenplay award from the jury headed by actress Juliette Binoche. It was their second Cannes screenplay award, to go along with one Best Director award, one Grand Prix and two Palme d’Ors, one for “Rosetta” in 1999 and one for “L’Enfant” six years later.
Halfway through the film, I felt dread for all the characters and worried about where they were going. But there are lovely moments of grace and hope at the end.
LUC DARDENNE From the very beginning, that’s what we wanted. We wanted all those young women and young mothers to have hope, even if it is very fragile.
JEAN-PIERRE DARDENNE We started by writing about one young mother, and we had the idea of this young woman exposed to violence, drugs, living on the streets. But we visited a home, and what we found is that those young mothers were in an environment that was a lot more gentle and soft than how they had lived in the past.
LUC The gentleness of the place and of the people working there and helping them changed what we wanted to write about. And we filmed in that home.
Did they have to move the girls out when you filmed?
LUC Yeah. Like, 300 meters away, there was a small building for rent with apartments, all vacant. So the real young mothers would leave the maternity home at 7 in the morning and go to that empty building that was set up for them. Then we would arrive with the film crew, and in the evening when we would leave, the mothers would come back.
How tricky was it to be continually working with babies?
JEAN-PIERRE At the end of the day, the only thing we couldn’t quite control was the babies. But the atmosphere on the set was very peaceful. If the real baby had to have his bottle or his mom’s breast, everybody waited.
LUC We took the time and waited for the babies to be comfortable and really play with the actresses. It was not just “Oh, the baby’s not doing what we wanted him to do. We’ll do visual effects and put his eyes in the right place.” There was only one instance where the baby was always looking at the camera and we couldn’t keep the shots.
The actresses had rehearsed with dolls but also worked with the babies, and they were able to form bonds. There was a scene where an actress was bathing a baby in the sink, and the way the baby looked at her really paralleled the character. We couldn’t have hoped for more honesty than that. We couldn’t have told the baby, “Oh, look, look at the actress!” But it naturally happened.
Were the young mothers in the home comfortable talking to you?
LUC The real ones? No. They were underage, and the law is that people that come from the outside don’t have the right to ask them questions about the past. We met them and had casual conversations, but we wouldn’t touch on their private lives.
Did any of them know who you are? Had they seen any of your movies?
LUC No, no, no. They haven’t seen any of the movies. But they could look us up on the internet, I guess.
Not exactly the target audience for Dardenne brothers movies, I suppose.
JEAN-PIERRE (Laughing) No, no, no, no!
This story first appeared in the Below-the-Line/Documentaries/International issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.
