Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardennes have settled into a comfortable niche over the course of 13 feature films. Well-researched social-realist depictions of marginalized people butting up against intransigent institutions is the way the record goes. To be fair to les frères Dardennes, there is a reliable level of unshowy competence as well as an integrity to their insistence on embedding with unglamorous, recognizable people.
All the while, they facilitate other filmmakers in bringing related French and Belgian slice-of-life visions to fruition. They helped to produce one of the best debuts of last year, “Julie Keeps Quiet” by Leonardo Van Dijl. At this edition of Cannes alone there are two films to bear their names as producers: “Enzo” by Laurent Cantet and Robin Campillo opened Directors Fortnight and, neatly enough, “Adam’s Sake” by Laura Wandel opened Critics’ Week.
Earnest force-for-cinema credentials established, how does “Young Mothers” fit into their body of work? Pivoting around a shelter for teenage mothers in the Belgian city of Liège, this modest offering does not deliver the immense emotional returns of “Two Days, One Night” (2014) — arguably their last heavy-hitter. Nonetheless, there is a satisfying, compact completeness to their handling of the storylines of four different young mothers and sufficient grace notes are enabled in each case to stave off the cliches that occasionally threaten to engulf events.
Jessica and Alba. Perla and Noa. Ariane and Lili. Julie and Mia. Each of the titular young mothers is a frightened child ill-equipped to handle the beloved bundle that now depends on them. The film’s most immediate power stems from the casting of age-appropriate, largely unknown actresses, so that we have frequent cause to double-take at the sight of babies with babies.
The shelter is depicted as a port in a storm where the girls participate in communal chores like cooking and cleaning and try to help each other out with childcare when they can. The grownup authorities are encouraging yet firm. Although the futures of Jessica, Perla, Ariane, Julie, are uncertain, this is a rare example of a positive institution showing up in a Dardennes flick.
Each mother is dealing with non-existent or complex relationships with their families of origin. Bar Julie, who drew the long straw with her devoted Dylan, each mother is also dealing with an absent or checked-out baby daddy. Addiction, either personal or from their own caregivers, is a motif. Any sense of preparedness for the baby’s arrival is notable by its absence as the characters spin out in spurts of productive energy, desperate to lay out the next track in the road in front of them. They want to bag a home or employment or a relationship to stop their new responsibility from feeling so totalizing and lonely.
The curtain opens on a heavily pregnant Jessica (Babette Verbeek) as she rolls up to meet the mother who gave her up as a baby. It’s a no show so caseworker Yasmine drives Jessica back home. Then we’re with Noa (Lucie LaRuelle) as she picks up Perla’s dad post release from a juvenile detention center. She’s delighted to finally present as a family, whereas he is more animated by his first spliff in two months. The stress of it all causes Noa to collapse and Julie (Elsa Houben) helps to bring her back to her body with a massage. It won’t be until later that we discover the demons that Julie is fighting.
The most fully inhabited inter-generational microcosm comes courtesy of Ariane (Janaina Halloy Foken). Her pressures are packaged in a brilliant, ragged performance by Christelle Cornill as the mother that forced her not to have an abortion. Their scenes reveal that Ariane is sturdier than the precarious adult who has only recently shed a violent ex and is so obsessed with baby Lili that we fear for the vacuum she is contending with alone. Cornill is a volatile presence capable of delivering a backhander before falling to her knees in remorse. Halloy Foken (whose credits include “Inexorable” by Fabrice Du Welz) holds her own as a focused teenager determined not to let her life be derailed by emotional blackmail close to home.
The brothers do rigorous work in cutting between these four stories while letting them intersect as the girls warmly co-exist in the shelter. Essential character details emerge amidst the pace that drives their daily goals, and the fears bubbling underneath occasionally erupt, without anyone having to pay the price for this natural human upset. If there is an archetypal quality to each girl and if this is amplified by the stereotypical nature of their problems, there is enough tenderness in the atmosphere of the shelter to allow each actor to take their foot of the gas and relax into the small and soothing tasks that make up domesticity.
A great deal of mastery is present in the balancing of disparate storylines and the blending of contrasting emotional landscapes. Individual insecurity is offset by release-valve relationships in a film that – like its young protagonist – is stronger than it looks.
Grade: B+
“Young Mothers” premiered in Competition at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. It is currently seeking U.S. distribution.
