Whether or not you “like” their work, you’d be hard pressed to deny the impact that Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne have had on recent art cinema. The Dardenne style (handheld camera kept close, hyper-naturalistic performances, real locations, a general hard-on for brutality wrapped in the mundane) has become the dominant style of serious movies about ordinary people. This is what happens when you win two Palme D’Ors in less than 10 years, I guess – other filmmakers presume that you’ve cracked the code. The dirty secret, of course, is that the audience for an actual Dardenne brothers film consists almost entirely of other filmmakers and critics. This decade’s key art film phenomenon is – ironically, considering the Dardennes’ preferred subject matter – virtually completely inaccessible to any sort of audience outside the elite circle that made it a phenomenon in the first place. If you’re reading this, you’re probably part of that elite. If you are not reading this, you probably hear the phrase “Belgian film about poor people” and run as fast as you can in the other direction.

WHEN YOU SUSPECT YOU HAVE A CHARACTER PEGGED, YOU’RE PROVEN WRONG.

That said, Lorna’s Silence is more entertaining on a base level than “a Belgian film about poor people” has any right to be.

Lorna (Arta Dobroshi), an Albanian immigrant who dreams of opening a cafe with her largely absent boyfriend, has married Belgian junkie Claudy (Jérémie Renier) to secure citizenship, which will allow her to get a bank loan. As part of a deal set up with taxi driver/low-level crook Fabio (Fabrizio Rongione), Lorna has agreed to make her newly-acquired Belgian citizenship useful by passing it on to a Russian stranger via another marriage. Claudy thinks he’s going to be paid 5,000 Euros to divorce Lorna so the second half of the deal can go through, but Lorna knows Fabio really plans to kill Claudy and make it look like an overdose. When Claudy asks for her help in getting off heroin, Lorna tries to convince Fabio to spare Claudy’s life, faking domestic violence so they can get a quickie divorce. At the point where Lorna is self-inflicting head injuries, it looks like Lorna’s Silence is on the road to a happy ending. It’s not.

Formally, Lorna’s Silence is above reproach. There’s a pure beauty to the imagery here, an ease with color and a subtlety of light that seems distinctly related to classic Belgian painting.

I first interpreted Lorna and Claudy’s relationship – the heart of the film, where her silence most crucially comes into play – as a different beast than when I took another look. It’s clear that lonely, self-loathing Claudy would love for Lorna to be a real romantic and domestic partner, but Lorna’s motivations are much more ambiguous. Why does she suddenly become emotionally invested enough in Claudy to try to save his life, to the point where she literally throws herself, mind and body, to the cause, when everyone she trusts insists that a junkie’s life is expendable? Fabio suggests at one point that her show of basic human empathy is out of character with “the Lorna I know.” Something has happened over the course of the marriage to change her; at first, I assumed that she had fallen in love, but the second time around I wasn’t sure. The Dardennes’ project here seems to be emotional whiplash: When you suspect you have a character pegged, you’re proven wrong, the moments of lowest spirit bump up against the highest, and there’s a dark humor to its deepest horrors.

Ultimately more difficult to reconcile, is Lorna’s ending. It’s because of the Dardennes’ commitment to speaks-for-itself naturalism that they’re able to make the point that the 21st century globalist dream of a middle class life in a Western country inevitably resolves in either death or madness. In the final scene, any pretense towards realism is thrown out the window, as a desperate Lorna finds and, thanks to a conveniently placed crow bar, gains access to a safe haven, all in about 30 seconds. At this point, Lorna has without question been driven by guilt and grief to some kind of madness, so it’s possible a psychotic break has occurred – in a film that often makes use of narrative ellipsis to throw the viewer off the track of the narrative, it’s possible that we’ve switched from an objective view of her circumstances, to her fantasy. I’d like to believe that’s the case; the Dardennes are too good to suddenly change the rules of their game at the last minute.

LORNA’S SILENCE 3 • Directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne • Arta Dobroshi, Jérémie Renier, Fabrizio Rongione • Rated R • 105 min • At Osio Cinemas.