The no-nonsense social cinema you'll never see on Netflix

In the movies of the Dardenne brothers You go in with a strong heart and come out with a wrinkle. It's always been that way, and it continues to be that way. The fact that we viewers have already absorbed his harsh social cinematic style, inherited from documentary and always far removed from rigid narrative structures, melodramas, and moralisms, perhaps doesn't mean we've amortized it. Because it's true that in Newborns There are no surprises or innovations. But in other hands, this film, which follows the lives of five teenagers at risk of social exclusion housed in a shelter for young mothers in Liège, would be a cataclysm (although The maternal, by Pilar Palomero, with a very similar theme, was also good).

But the Dardennes, as is their wont, don't subject the viewer to sentimental bribery: they don't force empathy for any of the characters in this ensemble drama, nor do they hide their flaws; they don't victimize or punish them. They don't judge. And this point of view, which may initially seem equidistant, is actually a very clear position in favor of social justice: these maternity homes are a necessary public service, regardless of whether we like or dislike the people they take in, whether they have millions of flaws or none at all. It is because of this firmness of ethical and aesthetic principles that now wrinkling our noses at a new title by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne because it too closely resembles the previous ones is, at the very least, frivolous.