Raising a child is one of the hardest things you can do, even under the best of circumstances. You have to operate on next to no sleep, navigate an already-challenging reality and find a way to support yourself financially, as well as emotionally. And you must do this day after day. In “Young Mothers,” the latest from social-realist filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, we see this through the lens of five young single mothers who are navigating the perils of growing up in a tough world. It’s a film that doesn’t just set out to capture their day-to-day lives, but also explores how they find ways to support each other when nobody else will.
The result is an often deeply felt ensemble film that can still underserve a few of the characters along the way. Even as the story strikes a good balance in how it cuts between each respective narrative, never giving more time to one or the other, there are a few storylines therein that are frequently repetitive and slightly misjudged. This doesn’t drag down the whole affair, as the film is still thoughtful in how it wraps all of the characters’ journeys up, though it does hold it back from being quite as effective as it could have been. Thankfully, the strong performances from the young cast all smooth over some of the rough patches that they encounter.
Premiering Friday in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, it all begins with Jessica (Babette Verbeek) as she tries to reconnect with her own mother while due to give birth herself very soon. She wants to know why her mother chose not to raise her in order to bring clarity to what motherhood will look like for her. However, answers will not come so easily as she is instead heartbroken by the fact that her mother doesn’t show up at the time they are supposed to. Though there is no main character, Jessica’s story provides a general overarching theme about the way the struggles of motherhood can echo through generations. We then accompany her back to a shelter for teenage mothers in the Belgian city of Liège where we meet Noa (Lucie LaRuelle), Julie (Elsa Houben), Ariane (Janaina Halloy Foken) and Naïma (Samia Hilmi).
The group will all have to deal with everything from the world’s worst father (namely because he is an immature child himself who has gotten out of juvenile detention) to an overbearing mother who is trying to take their daughter’s baby for themselves — despite not being particularly well-equipped to raise them. It covers overlapping issues surrounding class, mental health and addiction, gently capturing how these women’s challenges are exacerbated by a system that stacks things against them.
The shelter provides a stable foundation, with the moments of warmth that they share with each other there proving to be not just the bright spots narratively, but a critical way of surviving. Unfortunately, even this isn’t always enough as precarity hangs over all their lives. With frequently extended, unbroken takes that play out for minutes at a time and unobtrusive, observant camerawork, we get effectively drawn into the small snapshots of their lives.
Where a lesser film could fall into feeling like it is just hitting issues without exploring them, “Young Mothers” always grounds the bigger issues in real characters. It finds genuine emotion in capturing how this is not something abstract, but a reality with which they’ll have to contend. What can prove a little rough-going is when characters, namely Noa, must navigate some of the same interpersonal challenges (in her case, an absent father) that are not deepened the longer the film goes on and even start to tip into feeling a little off the mark.
It isn’t a film of bad intentions, but the way things spiral in her story can leave the character feeling stuck in limbo without much of anything illuminating to grasp onto along the way. The same is true of Ariane who, in a late scene, is faced with an impossible choice and references how important it is that her child learn music. It’s an emotional moment that doesn’t hit as hard as it could have as we didn’t get to see the mother caring about music all that much up until this point or get to feel why it was a point of passion for her. While part of this is because she certainly had a lot going on and not always time to stop to lay this out, a richer film would have carved out moments for more critical reflection.
With all this in mind, the closing of the film leaves things on a high note even as some of the mothers still have a long road ahead of them. You come to understand each of them and feel like you’ve known them for longer than the brief time in their lives the film provides a look into. Even when life keeps throwing everything it can at them, “Young Mothers” manages to mostly stand on its own two feet and continue on through whatever stumbles it makes.
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