"People who saw me holding the seal like a baby must have thought I was a looney" - An interview with Arta Dobroshi

When I watched the Dardenne brothers' new film The Silence of Lorna, I was struck by the astonishing performance by the unknown actress in the lead role. When I met Arta Dobroshi a few days later, I was even more impressed by her achievement – it was hard to believe the beautiful and light-hearted woman sitting in front of me was the same person who convincingly played such a tough, withdrawn character on screen. After winning her part in the Dardennes' fifth picture through an open audition process, Dobroshi has experienced an extraordinary rise to prominence this year, and one suspects this is just the start of an exciting career. I met the actress in London recently to talk about her remarkable performance, but as this discussion does reveal certain unexpected plot developments, I would advise readers to avoid this interview until they have seen the film.

To begin, could you tell me a bit about your background and experience before this film?

I finished the Academy of Arts acting and drama course in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, which lasted for four years. It's acting in general for film and theatre, and when I was studying I played in theatre and short movies all the time. In fact, the first time I took a drama was when I was 15 in America, because I lived there for a year as an exchange student, and then when I was 17 I played in this performance with young people, still non-professionals. I loved it so much, rehearsing for eight hours or more, and I said something must be wrong with me because everyone else was tired and I was saying, "I want more, I want more!" [laughs]. Also, my older brother is a director so I learned a lot from him, and when I finished the Academy I got a role in a feature film in Albania, which was a co-production with Germany and France, and then I got a second feature, a third feature, and then I got this one. When I got The Silence of Lorna I was in Sarajevo doing a play in Bosnian. The casting agent for the Dardenne brothers called me said they had seen some of my movies, and there is an open casting in Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia, all places where Albanians live. I went to Pristina, and the audition was open for everyone else, it was five minutes, and I just had to say, "I'm Arta Dobroshi" in French, but I didn't speak French. After that they called me again in two weeks and said they wanted to see me, and I was in Sarajevo, so they came and we shot all day long, and then they asked me to go to Belgium to do two more scenes in French with Jérémie Renier and Fabrizio Rongione. I learned the two scenes phonetically, and after I finished the two days of shooting they said, "Congratulations, you are Lorna".

How much time did you have to learn French before shooting the film?

I went on a two-week intensive course, it was eight hours a day, but I was also learning in the hotel doing double the work, and not going out at all. After two months I had to speak French, and I also had to cut my hair, because it was very long. It was the first time I cut my hair so short, and we cut it shorter and shorter, because they wanted to see my eyes and face, so they cut it really short, almost bald [laughs]. It was nice because I always wanted to cut my hair but I didn't dare, so this was my chance, and I wore a wig in one movie that was like Lorna's hair, and I liked it, but when I was getting my hair cut for real I thought, "Be careful what you wish for". Now I'm growing it, I haven't cut it since the movie, so I'll let it grow and we'll see.

Were you familiar with the Dardennes' work before you got this role?

Yes, because of the academy, but I hadn't seen their films. Just before I did the audition, I found a movie on DVD, because in the Balkans they aren't shown like in Europe, and the only way to find them in Pristina was on pirate DVDs. I mean, it's bad, but at the same time it's the only way to see the more arty movies, because we only get more commercial movies. I saw L'Enfant, and when I got the part I was so happy, because the character of Lorna is so good, and she's in every sequence. Nowadays there are more leading roles for males than females, so when you get a role like this, I had the feeling it was like Monster with Charlize Theron. She is very strong, and the whole movie is on her shoulders, so it was great.

As well as being exciting, was that an intimidating prospect, to be carrying the whole film?

No, it was just exciting. I think it's better if you're in every sequence and shooting every day, because every day you are Lorna, you don't have a chance to have a week off, and the movie was shot chronologically, so every day I could experience what Lorna experienced. The way I work is to be as close to the character as possible, so I tried to spend five months alone, I didn't go out, I didn't party or drink, and after shooting I went home or just walked on the streets that Lorna walks on. That doesn't mean I didn't have fun, we laughed a lot while we were rehearsing and shooting the movie, but I just tried to keep that rhythm that she has.

To shoot a film chronologically is a very rare opportunity in movies.

Yes, definitely, usually you shoot the last sequence the first day and everything is mixed. Maybe there were ten scenes we didn't shoot chronologically, but we started with the first scene in the bank and the last scene was the last scene, and it's great because the evolution of the character goes in a natural way. At the end you don't even have to communicate, everything goes so smoothly because you are so into it. When you wake up in the morning you are Lorna, and it was only Saturdays and Sundays I went to the pool to relax, but that's it.

Lorna's a fascinating character because she goes through so many changes, from assisting with a murder at the start of the film, to having a change of heart and possibly losing her mind at the end. What's it like to go through all of those emotions?

In the beginning she is like a robot, she does things very automatically, even the way she makes a sandwich. Then she starts to change, but I never thought about it, I just went with the flow, because I was so into the character that things went naturally. When Claudy died, even I as Arta was sad, but then you didn't have time to even think about Claudy, because I had new problems to solve, and things were changing without even realising that it was changing. The first time I saw the movie I saw these changes, but when you are so far inside the character you are not aware of it. That's how I work, I cannot work any differently. There are many scenes in the movie that are emotionally difficult to do, and after a scene sometimes I just felt like crying, but Lorna keeps her emotions inside, she does not let them out.

When you're doing such an emotional role, is it hard to switch off from that and forget those feelings when you go home at the end of the day?

No, I cannot switch off. Actually, I try to keep those feelings, that's good for me, because I keep the feelings and I can think ahead to the next day for Lorna, so purposely I was trying to save that mood. I could have gone out and had fun, but that was fun for me, the research is fun for me, and I always write the biography of the character – where was she born, what does she do, who were her parents – until the first scene of the movie.

If you were so in tune with Lorna's emotions, I suppose you had to believe in her baby as well.

Yes, I believed in it totally. For me, speaking as Lorna, I believe in it, and from the first moment we started shooting the scenes where Lorna thinks she's having a baby, I had this... how do you say it... a stuffed animal, a white one that lives in cold weather...

A polar bear?

No, she lives in cold water...

A seal?

A seal! Bravo! [laughs] A white stuffed seal, and the moment we started shooting, I psychologically needed to keep that as my baby, until the movie was finished. I kept it like a symbol and whenever we were going out to shoot I would think, "Oh, I forgot my seal", it was crazy, and people who saw me holding the seal like a baby must have thought I was a looney [laughs]. But you have to believe it or the audience won't believe you, and I believed it so much I was worried that my belly would start to grow. I read once that it exists, that women really believe they are pregnant and their belly starts to grow, so I thought, "Arta, you have to stop". I was a little afraid in that moment.

And how do you feel about that final scene? What does the future hold for Lorna?

For me when I was doing the scene, I had a feeling of peace, and I feel the ending is more positive. After everything that happened, she found her peace, and it is sad that she found peace with a baby that doesn't exist, but at least she found it. That's how I felt, and maybe I'm totally wrong, and the beauty of it is that the audience can decide. That was just my ending, and the audience may understand it in a different way. Maybe they will be wondering, "What's going to happen, will there be Lorna Part II?" [laughs]. We were thinking in Part II we should have Lorna with a Porsche, with three children, she has escaped all the trouble and finally she can party [laughs].

In this film, you're working with a number of actors who have already worked with the Dardennes before. Did you find it easy to join that group, and get to grips with their working method?

When I arrived the most important thing was how to develop Lorna in the best way possible, and then I met Fabrizio and Jérémie, and later Morgan who played in Le Fils with Olivier, and it was like we had already worked together before. We all sat down together and had coffee, just like we are now, and it was so cool. I have to thank them for being so open.

What's it like to work with two directors?

It's great, I think. It's better because for your character there are three minds working, yours and the two directors', and they go together so well. Sometimes I needed to ask Jean-Pierre something and sometimes I spoke to Luc, depending on the scene, but I really think it's great to work with two directors. They are saying the same thing but in different ways, and they fill you with so many emotions and ideas. I actually worked with two directors before, it was a father and a son for an Albanian movie that was shot in the Czech Republic, and that was the same thing. The father was 70 years-old and the son was 35, so it was two different points of view, but it was very good. It doesn't matter how many people are there, we are all just trying to do one story – the lighting guys, the cameraman, the decorators – it's for one story. So when you think about it, it doesn't matter how many directors there are.

They once described themselves as "One person with four eyes".

Yes, it's true! And then you become one person with six eyes or eight eyes because there are other actors working with each other. Sometimes Luc will be behind the screen and Jean-Pierre will be with us on the set, or vice-versa, it's never the same. People think it's divided and somebody will always stays behind the camera, but it depends on the situation.

What have you got planned next?

For the moment I'm travelling a lot for the movie, I haven't stopped travelling, and I have one more month of that. Then I'm reading scripts, and it's very important for me to choose a good script and to have patience rather than to hurry up just to do something. I would love to do something in English now, so we'll see. And French also, because now I speak French. It's good that you do a movie and you learn a language.

How many languages do you speak?

Only four.

Only four? That's not bad, you know.

[laughs] It's only four, but you learn then so naturally you don't even know you're learning them. I'm Albanian from Kosovo, and it's so complicated with the new states over there now, so our language is Albanian, and I speak Bosnian, which is the same as Serbian and Croat. I understand Macedonian because it is Slavic – I can't say I can speak it but I can understand it – and I speak English since I was little, from the movies and cartoons, and it was natural.

Will The Silence of Lorna be released in Kosovo?

Yes, it will come out. I don't know which month, It will be next year, but I'm not sure. It will be crazy, because when The Silence of Lorna was chosen in Cannes, people were really following the story every night on the news, it was "Cannes, Cannes, Cannes" as the main news. It's great because every time you always have bad news, like politics or the banks going down, and then you usually have Cannes at the end, so it was great.

And how have you been handling experiences like Cannes, and all of the interviews and travelling you have been doing for this movie?

It seems very normal, to be honest. Since I was 15 I travelled everywhere and lived all around the world, and when I started acting I always said, "I am a citizen of the world and I want to work everywhere". People said it would be very hard because I am from Kosovo and it doesn't have any real status in film or theatre, but the world is very small and I cannot wear blinkers. Everything is normal when you are an actor, you do movies or theatre and then you travel, you do festivals, I have already done festivals with other movies, so it feels very natural. I am very lucky to work in this profession because it is not easy to be working all the time, so for that I feel very lucky, and very happy.

"To enter human nature, that is what we like to do" - An interview with Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne are two of the most consistently brilliant filmmakers in contemporary cinema. The duo made their breakthrough in 1996 with La Promesse, and the realistic, starkly powerful style that would later win them such acclaim was already in evidence. Their tales of ordinary working-class Belgians forced to confront huge moral dilemmas have tackled themes of poverty, trafficking, love and revenge, but these themes are never the main issue, as their work is always focused on the complex and vivid characters at the centre of their stories. After La Promesse, Rosetta, The Son and L'Enfant, the Dardennes have now directed The Silence of Lorna, a gripping study of a young Albanian immigrant involved in a green card scam, and I met the two directors recently to discuss it. This discussion reveals a number of large and surprising plot developments (from the first question onwards), so I would recommend avoiding it until you've seen the film.

You often put us into straight the story with very little information, and we gradually learn who the characters are and what their situation is. When you are writing the film, do you imagine histories for your characters, more than we see in the finished product?

Jean-Pierre Dardenne No, when we begin we have the general structure of the story, but it takes a long time and we are always changing things. The one thing we knew in this script was that when Claudy died, the story has to carry on, but we didn't know where she was going or what would happen to her, will she be killed in the end or not? We had always thought that even if she was going to be killed, it would be while protecting her child because she believes in it. Of course, by the time we are filming we have already worked out those scenes, but when we are writing we have to talk a lot, it takes several months.

And when you have finished the screenplay, does that ever change during the filming process?
Luc Dardenne After we have finished the structure we make the script, scene by scene, several versions, and then we film. We always film chronologically, and the script normally doesn't change that much, but in Rosetta, for example, we did cancel a character. By filming in chronological order we feel what we can and cannot do, it's the same for the actors as well, and maybe we take out one line, and then we work on the editing. The script stays the same, and there might be different versions in terms of mise-en-scène, but in general, I don't know why, we always have around 15 minutes less than we had in the beginning. When you see the film, you can allows yourself to make more abrupt cuts and perhaps throw the audience by losing certain things, and that's something you can't get on the page where you feel obliged to explain a bit more. Already with La Promesse, there was a producer reading the script and saying, "It's too fast", and we took even more out because we felt we were explaining too much.

At the start of the film Lorna is ready to help somebody be murdered, what do you think changes her mind?

LD There are several things. There's the fact that she lives with him, and the simple fact that Claudy asks for her help, if he hadn't done that I don't think she would have gone towards him. From the moment she does go towards him, she is going against all of her coldness and the plan she had established in her head. Of course, human beings don't go in just one direction, she can reverse her steps as well, and she sees him in the hospital, and also asleep. What's interesting is that no one helps her to go in that direction, Sokol says "he's just a junkie" and Fabio doesn't give a damn. Maybe the fact that she's alone helps her to find that moral ground, sometimes you need that solitude to think about where you want to go.

A number of your films feature these characters who are alone and have to make these life-changing decisions. Why do you like to explore these situations in your films?

JPD It would be really stupid to respond "because we're interested in that and we can't do anything else" [laughs]. We are interested in the different possibilities and attitudes that are within a human being, and how do you deal with evil, because that's what she's doing. Her life is determined by a number of conditions which she can't master, and how do you work that out? How do you do it in relation to the desire you have to better your life? It's not just a little chat in a coffee shop, it's a real alternative, "I can have a better life, but in order to have this better life I have to participate in a murder of someone". So that's what we're interested in, how do our characters deal with such a situation, and when they realise they're facing another human being, do they realise too late? That's what happened to Lorna.

LD She lacks courage, that's the silence.

And because of her lack of courage she is left with a feeling of guilt. Is the guilt the reason she invents this baby in her mind?
LD I think so, yes. I think the return of the ghost of Claudy in her belly is guilt. She tried to forget him, with the dance, and the fact that Fabio gives her the money that she refused previously, she takes it from him now like the earlier Lorna would have done, but in doing so she is also calling the spirit of Claudy because she makes herself even more guilty. In the scene afterwards her happiness is broken.

That scene of the happiness being broken took a lot of people in the cinema by surprise, and nobody knew what had happened for a while. When you made that decision, did you intend to throw people off in that way?

JPD Originally our challenge as filmmakers was to not show his death. How do we make the audience feel the disappearance of Claudy without showing that he has been killed? It seemed to us more interesting to make him come back very gently through Lorna's gestures, through the objects she touches, before we know what has happened. At the same time she confirms what we have already guessed, the feelings she has for this guy. It's true at that point, like the characters, the spectators are a little bit lost by the fact that we have dug this hole in the middle of the film. When we made the decision not to show Claudy's death, we hadn't yet made the decision about the baby, that's something that came later when we made him disappear so abruptly.

How do you work with your actors on the set, do you rehearse a lot?

JPD Well, take this particular film for example. In this situation we have worked with a lot of the actors before, and then there is Arta, who is a professional actress, and who has worked in theatre a lot as well. We rehearse with Arta, Jérémie and Fabio, for a month to a month and a half before shooting, sometimes we work with them together and sometimes just Arta alone. We work in the actual sets where we will shoot the film, and these rehearsals are more kneading the dough, really. It's not a round table discussion on the psychology of the characters, it's more the movement, the gestures, how they will get from A to B, just mixing these things and trying them out. It's like a football team, where you need to train and repeat certain situations, so by the time you get to the match you are at your most free and available. We need the actors to be free, open and available. In the case of Arta Dobroshi, it helped her to see how we work with Jérémie, and to see how he worked with our approach. It helped her approach it a different way, not from a psychological angle, although there is psychology there, it comes from the roots upwards until she embodies the character.

Arta is amazing in the film. When you first saw her did you know she was Lorna?

LD No, there were many other actors. We were looking for an actress who speaks Albanian, and if we hadn't found her we would have looked for another language that isn't spoken in Western Europe. Lorna could have been blonde, tall, brunette, short, with glasses... we didn't really have an idea, except we needed her to be mysterious, and we needed in her face a coldness but also a gentleness coming through. She can be cold, but then she has a smile that can make her close to you. In cinema innocent faces can hide other things.

You do show a lot of Lorna's face in this film, and throughout the film the camera is much more still than it has been in your earlier films.

JPD It was necessary to watch and look at Lorna and not be present in her energy, it was important for the different plotlines to resonate, there needed to be space for the meetings of Lorna with Fabio and Claudy. It was also necessary to watch Lorna in the city among other people, and to see her dancing with Sokol next to other couples, so the camera was further away, just observing.

I noticed a few other differences in this film compared to your previous work. In the final scene we hear music, and I don't think you've ever used music in any of your films before. Why did you make this choice?

LD It is true that this is the first time we've used music in a film. I think we felt we couldn't leave the spectator alone, and at the same time it was also not leaving Lorna alone. It's not a music that would bring some general conciliation, but it's music that enables you to share her thoughts at this point, and I find there's something that redeems her to some extent. You think, yes, she has changed, she has accessed her humanity, one could say.

Although you said the ending is redeeming, do you think it's an optimistic ending? She is also losing her sanity a little, so what does the future hold for Lorna?

LD I think her "madness" is a proof of her humanity. She becomes totally naive, there is no other solution than to become the mother of this child. At the same time, what she has done has been done, and she can't deal with it in any other way than to lose her mind like this.

You also moved from Seraing, where you made all of your previous films, to Liege for this one...

JPD It's just ten kilometres [laughs].

But does filming in a capital city give you a bigger canvas to work on?

JPD Seraing is an industrial town which has lost a lot of its power, so I don't think somebody coming from a country like Albania would wish to go to a place like Seraing if they wanted to make their dreams into a reality. Liege is not a huge city like Paris or London, but it's a city where you can meet other people and have the opportunity to find a job. Also, being a city, it's alive at night, and we needed that nightlife. The three characters all live at night, and we needed the artificial lighting, from the car lights and taxis, and to see people going out for a drink after work, so we could have Lorna in the middle of all these people. We couldn't do that in Seraing.

You started making documentaries before making fiction films, and your films often deal with very topical issues like poverty, immigration and human trafficking. Do you think fiction is a better tool to explore these themes than documentary?

JPD One must never want to generalise, for example there is a very beautiful film coming out in France which tells the history of peasants in France, so what we're saying here only applies to us. For us, fiction is a way of telling things we wouldn't be able to tell in a documentary, there are human possibilities that we can explore in drama, like in La Promesse when a father convinces his son that it is better to let this guy die. We also love working with actors, and we create these people that don't exist. They exist with us during eight weeks of shooting, it's fantastic, and when it's finished they're all dead [laughs]. Every member of the crew and the team has given life to the characters, and we like that. I think the main reason is that, apart from the fact that we were getting frustrated with documentaries, we just love working with actors, professional and non-professional, to create the existence of people.

LD To enter human nature, that is what we like to do.

What filmmakers have influenced you?

LD There are a lot, but it always changes. We want to remain humble and modest, so don't compare us to this filmmaker, but there is a Fritz Lang movie...I don't know the English title...about the assassination of Heydrich...

Oh, Hangmen Also Die.

LD That's it. It plays with the false and the real, and I think his mise-en-scène must have run through our minds. There are a lot of filmmakers I appreciate, earlier on we were mentioning Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanours, but I can't say that's a direct reference, and we like Bresson as well.

Ever since La Promesse, there has been a three-year gap between each of your films. Should we expect another Dardennes film in 2011?

JPD I hope so. Each time we finish a film we say the next one will be quicker [laughs], and maybe it will next time, but you are correct, since La Promesse there has been a rhythm that has installed itself. We will see in three years if your bet is right or not.

Review - The Silence of Lorna (Le silence de Lorna)

The start of a Dardenne brothers film is always a rather disorienting experience. They like to cut straight into the story, spending no time on preliminaries or introductions, and leaving us to gather details and learn more about the characters in a gradual process, until we are fully involved in their experiences. Their fifth feature, The Silence of Lorna, opens in a bank, with money being handed over the counter and a young woman telling the clerk that she will soon be a Belgian citizen. This is Lorna (Arta Dobroshi), who has come from Albania to live in Liege, and who has earned her citizenship through a marriage to Claudy (Jérémie Renier). The pair live together in a small flat, but there is little warmth in their relationship, despite Claudy's best efforts to win over his frosty wife. For Lorna, this is strictly business, and that business is a green card scam that she has become involved in at the behest of her real boyfriend Sokol (Alban Ukaj) and local gangster Fabio (Fabrizio Rongione). The plan is to get rid of Claudy as soon as he has outlived his usefulness, by forcing the junkie to overdose on heroin, and that will leave the way clear for Lorna to remarry and pass on her citizenship to another, with a Russian gentleman already standing by brandishing a big cheque.

At this point, Lorna starts to get cold feet, and she suggests a quickie divorce as an alternative to murder. We can see now that her feelings for Claudy are much more complicated than they first seemed to be, although it's hard to get an exact reading on those feelings. Has she fallen in love with Claudy? Does she simply feel sympathy for him? Or perhaps she has simply woken up to the monstrousness of the plot she is involved in, and she suddenly feels compelled to act for fear of losing her soul? In this respect Lorna finds herself in a similar situation to Bruno, the character Jérémie Renier played in the Dardenne brothers' L'Enfant – being guilty of committing a terrible crime and desperately searching for a way to make amends – and her steely determination recalls the heroine of their first Palme d'Or winner Rosetta. But Lorna is very much her own character, a figure as complex and compelling as any the Dardennes have given us, and in Arta Dobroshi, they have unearthed another extraordinary new star.

Dobroshi's face doesn't reveal emotions easily. There's a guarded quality about her countenance, which she only drops occasionally, but those moments are enough for us to see a mixture of conflicting feelings raging inside her character. Dobroshi attacks the role with a sense of conviction that drives the movie forward, and we completely believe that everything she does is coming from somewhere deep inside herself. Whether she is banging her head painfully against a wall – in the hope that an accusation of abuse will speed up the divorce procedure – or suddenly lighting up as she imagines her future running a small café, she is a luminous presence. She also works brilliantly with Renier, a Dardennes regular, who gives a stunningly empathetic display as Claudy, which shouldn't be overlooked. He makes his lovelorn junkie feel desperately real, there's a powerful tenderness about the way he yearns for Lorna's companionship, and a sex scene between the pair – the first the brothers have ever shot – is unexpectedly moving.

I feel we should tread carefully at this juncture, and I will make a great effort not to discuss any more plot specifics to ensure the film's biggest surprises remain undiminished for the viewer (be warned, some other reviews have not been so conscientious); but there is one sudden development that occurs during The Silence of Lorna, which I must bring up. The interesting thing about this twist is not so much the shattering event itself, but more the manner in which the Dardennes handle it, allowing it to occur off-screen and simply moving the film on without exposition, until we slowly put the pieces together. It is a truly daring move, and it threw the whole audience for a loop at the screening I attended, but it also had something of a jarring and counterproductive effect, taking us momentarily out of the drama, as we struggled to comprehend the story's new direction.

This film is also taking the Dardennes in something of a new direction. Although The Silence of Lorna appears to fit neatly into their oeuvre at first glance, the brothers have taken a number of risky narrative and aesthetic decisions that mark this as something new. They've toned down the restless camerawork, which followed the characters at close quarters, in favour of a more objective, classical approach, and it's probably a smart move from the filmmakers, whose style was in danger of growing repetitive by the time they made L'Enfant. This film is a little more detached than the brothers' earlier work, which is perhaps why it has received a slightly cooler reaction from critics, but it still displays their exquisite control of mood, and their ability to explore complex moral issues with an incisive and unerring eye.

The Silence of Lorna is more reliant on plot than previous Dardennes efforts, although the brothers' handling of this narrative is typically unconventional. Aside from the audacious ellipsis I mentioned earlier, they take the film into a number of surprising and hitherto uncharted areas, with Lorna's fragile mental state becoming increasingly unsound as the picture progresses. This is ultimately another rich and nuanced character study from two of the most valuable filmmakers in world cinema, and the fact that the Dardennes are trying to spread their wings with this feature – to shake up the old formula – is an exciting prospect that we should embrace. The Silence of Lorna might lack the immediacy of something like Rosetta or their masterpiece The Son, but it offers a different kind of satisfaction, and the film's unbearably tense final fifteen minutes leads to a beautiful and deeply haunting climax, which is among the finest moments they have ever given us. It has been weeks since I saw The Silence of Lorna, but I find my thoughts drifting back to it again and again.

Read my interview with Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne here.

Read my interview with Arta Dobroshi here.

Review - Blindness

My eyes! My eyes! It's all too easy to make jokes about Fernando Meirelles' Blindness being an eyesore, but unfortunately such a term is the most appropriate way to describe his inexplicably dismal new feature. This adaptation of José Saramago's highly acclaimed 1995 novel tries to find a suitably cinematic method to depict the sudden outbreak of sightlessness that spreads like wildfire through a nameless city, but whereas something like The Diving Bell and the Butterfly found a perfect visual scheme to place us in its central character's situation, Blindness overdoses on similar techniques until the movie becomes nigh-on unwatchable. The first character to go blind in the film is a Japanese gentleman (Yusuke Iseya) who suddenly loses his sight while sitting at a set of traffic lights. He describes the experience as "like swimming through milk", and Meirelles chooses to visualise this for us by flooding the screen with light, until we too can only make out the most indistinct shapes and blurry outlines in a sea of white.

Such camera trickery is not necessarily a bad idea in and of itself, but Meirelles and his cinematographer César Charlone return to the same gimmick again and again, repeatedly giving us confusing point-of-view shots and even marking scene transitions with a glaring whiteout. The approach extends to the production design as well, which is almost exclusively painted in shades of white and grey, and even Julianne Moore – one of cinema's most vibrant redheads – looks like she has been dipped in bleach before the cameras started to roll. She plays a woman married to the Ophthalmologist (Mark Ruffalo) who treats the Japanese man at the start of the film, and who is baffled by the apparent lack of symptoms he displays. When he wakes up in the morning, the doctor can't see either, and he warns his wife to stay away from him for fear of catching what is clearly a highly contagious disease. Bizarrely, she seems to be immune to the outbreak, and she seems to be the only one, as we watch a chain reaction of people who have interacted with each other losing their sight one by one. In case you are wondering why I haven't provided any character names in this summary, it's because there aren't any, which I guess we're supposed to take as a sign that this story could represent any group of people anywhere in the world.

So, if the ghastly cinematography doesn't drive you from the cinema, then perhaps the crushingly unsubtle allegory will. When Ruffalo is carted off to a quarantine facility for the blind, Moore decides to feign blindness in order to go with him, and the pair end up being the first inmates in a disused hospital that will quickly descend into a living hell. As the wards fill up with the newly blind, people start tripping over themselves, pissing and shitting in the corridors, losing their clothes and ultimately losing any sense of dignity. As the only sighted person in the building (a fact she keeps to herself), Moore does what she can to maintain order, and soon she and Ruffalo have set up a semi-stable society within Ward One, but some new arrivals in Ward Three upset the applecart. Led by the gun-toting, self-appointed "King of Ward Three" (Gael García Bernal), these inmates begin hording the food supplies and demanding payment for any rations. At first, the payment involves any jewellery and other valuables that people may still possess, but when that supply is exhausted, Bernal begins demanding women for food, and soon the female contingent of Ward One are lining up to be raped in order to secure some much needed sustenance.

The basic lesson of Blindness is obvious. This unexplained loss of sight is a simplistic metaphor for our inability or unwillingness to engage with – to really see – our fellow man, and in true Lord of the Flies style, a regression to a primal state leads to anarchy and savagery. Meirelles doesn't display much insight on this subject, however, and instead he just spends the bulk of two hours pushing our faces into the filth of human misery; showing us scene after scene of depravity without giving us any good reason to endure the endless barrage of nihilism. I suspect this kind of allegorical, heavily symbolic storytelling worked better on the page than it does on the screen, and in adapting Saramago's work, screenwriter Don McKellar has corralled the themes and incidents in a blunt fashion that leaves the film feeling didactic and preachy. McKellar actually serves double time in Blindness – he plays the thief who steals the Japanese man's car at the start of the film, before losing his sight soon after – but like most of the cast, he is given little to work with. Alice Braga (prostitute), Maury Chaykin (accountant), Sandra Oh (Minister for Health) and Danny Glover (wiser-than-thou sage) are among the name actors who inhabit the supporting roles, but all of them give shapeless, one-note performances, stumbling (literally) through the movie with no development or direction. The fact that none of the characters have names means we never really view them as characters at all; they're just a bunch of recognisable actors, playing blind to little effect.

Even Julianne Moore can't rise above the murk. As you'd expect, she throws herself completely into her role, but her character doesn't make much sense (as the only sighted person in the prison, why doesn't she stop Bernal before the mass rapes take place?), and her considerable efforts are ultimately wasted. After wallowing in despair, Blindness finally ends on a hopeful note with its deux ex machina finale, but this climax feels rushed and tacked-on, and hardly worth wading through the previous two hours for. It really is something to see such a collection of talent and resources coming together to produce a film that's so relentlessly alienating and misguided, but it isn't entirely a surprise given my reaction to earlier Fernando Meirelles films. He has always appeared to be a filmmaker more focused on the aesthetic value of his films than anything else, and when I reviewed his 2005 film The Constant Gardener I wrote: "In almost every scene the prime motivation seems to be visual impact over narrative coherence...it soon starts to distract the attention from what’s being said in a scene when the director insists on flooding your eyes every few seconds". Blindness is simply the director taking this style to indulgent extremes, and his frantic over-direction completely overwhelms the story and pushes its audience further away at every turn. Meirelles wants his film to explore the darkest aspects of human nature, but he leaves the viewer stranded in the same desperate state as his characters, hopelessly lost without a guide, and blinded by the light.

Review - Gomorrah (Gomorra)

"As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster," says Ray Liotta at the start of Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, and in Matteo Garrone's Gomorrah, two young wannabes share the same sentiment. Marco (Marco Macor) and Ciro (Ciro Petrone) quote Scarface, fire guns for kicks, rip off local drug gangs and dream of toppling the local boss. For 13 year-old Totò (Salvatore Abruzzese), the lure of a life of crime is just as strong; he spends his days delivering groceries for his mother, but he watches gun battles and dealers operating outside his home, and he wants to be part of it, even if the initiation involves taking a gunshot to the chest ("Now you are a man", he is told). These are the aspirations of young Italians living on the bullet-scarred streets of Naples, but Garrone's outstanding film shows us where those ambitions lead – to violence, betrayal and death. Gomorrah is based upon Roberto Saviano's non-fiction book that laid bare the inner workings of the Neapolitan crime organisation known as the Camorra, which rules the area and controls its inhabitants through fear. After exposing the Camorra in his book, Saviano now lives under constant police protection.

In attempting to provide an overview of the ground covered by Saviano, Garrone and his team of screenwriters (six in total, including the director and author) have drawn up five separate stories that take us into different areas of the Camorra's operations. While Marco, Ciro and Totò are on the outside looking in, other characters show us the reality of mafia life; such as Don Ciro (Gianfelice Imparato), the meek, middle-aged accountant who travels around a local estates handing out money to those who have relatives serving time and have stayed loyal to the cause. The housing project he frequents is one of the focal points of the picture; a hive of both legal and illegal activity (we see a wedding being celebrated on one level, while drugs are exchanged on a walkway above), and the enormous, labyrinthine structure feels more imposing and prison-like as the encroaching gang wars close in on the reluctant Don Ciro. Another, similarly mild-mannered character who finds himself being dragged into a war he wants no part of is the tailor Pasquale (Salvatore Cantalupo), who accepts a large job from mafia-linked dealers, and whose decision to moonlight as a tutor for a Chinese-run factory has tragic repercussions.

The key thing about these narrative strands is that they show us the banality of the criminal underworld, taking care to avoiding clichés and stripping away any sense of glamour from their subject. There is violence, of course, but the violence pops out of nowhere and is over in seconds; sending a sudden jolt through the audience (it often made me jump out of my seat), and emphasising the constant, lurking spectre of death that stalks behind anyone involved in this world. Gomorrah is unflashy and direct, tackling its subject matter with documentary-style rigour, and Garrone's pacing is expertly judged, giving each of his disparate story strands time to develop in a satisfying way, and ensuring the film always remains balanced. I did spend much of Gomorrah anticipating the moment when all of the narratives would suddenly start to collide (it seems de rigueur for any multi-stranded movie to follow this pattern these days), but although the stories do brush against each other (Totò and Don Ciro both have dealings with a woman named Maria), they never come together in the expected fashion. That decision is another one to be applauded, as instead we are presented with a much more expansive view of mafia life; a film that broadens its horizons as it progresses rather than drawing narrowing dots between its players.

Garrone's direction is direct and lacking in ostentation, but he has an eye for inventive compositions that result in some supremely memorable scenes. The film opens in a tanning salon, with a group of mobsters basking in a blue neon glow that lends the sequence a surreal quality as they are ambushed and gunned down. Another striking sequence shows Marco and Ciro shooting their stolen guns at an abandoned boat as they stride up and down the river in their underwear – the image is both funny and unsettling – and the aftermath of one shootout is shown from above, as the camera follows a dazed Don Ciro through a path strewn with bloodied corpses. Marco Onorato's cinematography is beautifully controlled throughout, and the film refrains from using a musical score unless scenes are accompanied by the cheesy pop tunes the film's characters listen to, tunes that provide an unusual counterpoint to the drama. Garrone also has a real knack for casting – a number of the actors here are non-professionals picked from the local community – and he draws great performances from everyone, particularly Imparato and Cantalupo, who both bring a powerful sense of understated emotion to their roles.

Another great performance can be found in the fifth of Gomorrah's five narrative strands, one which I haven't touched upon yet. In this segment, the ever-excellent Toni Servillo plays Franco, a sharp-suited, smarmy businessman who represents the higher end of mafia operations, a world away from the street-level antics of Ciro and Marco. Along with his wide-eyed young protégé (Carmine Paternoster), Franco travels around the country securing disposal contracts for barrels of toxic waste that are subsequently buried deep in a massive quarry. This is where the big money is, but Gomorrah shows us all of the bloodshed and crime that this empire has been built upon, and how the Camorra's influence seeps into every aspect of life; their profits from illegal activities being invested into legal enterprises around the world (such as the reconstruction of the World Trade Centre). 'Twas ever thus, perhaps, and Gomorrah offers little hope that things will ever change, but rarely has a single film provided such a vivid and engrossing portrait of an organised crime network.