La Promesse (The Promise)

Urgently, without sentimentality, "La Promesse" shows us the birth of a conscience, and its cost. This fleet, powerful movie may prove to be a classic. [30 June 1997, p.79]

Both sides of the story -- the larger context and the intense and intimate drama -- are painted with an absolutely unswerving sense of truth. And, as we watch this movie, full of violence, injustice and compassion, there is barely a moment that seems calculated or contrived. Read full review

The conflicts involved are intense and absorbing, proving that compelling moral dilemmas make for the most dramatic cinema. Read full review

Despite being a low-key production, La Promesse speaks volumes about how we treat other human beings and what it means to truly grow up. Read full review

Hurtling from the screen with a vigor and importance that are all but absent from contemporary film, it's a deeply moving social drama, raw and gritty in style, shining with moral purpose as it delivers a scathing take-it-into-the-streets critique of feral capitalism and racism. [18 July 1997, p.D1]

La Promesse was written and directed by the brother duo of Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, who were previously known as documentary makers. They bring an unblinking realism to the story, but aren't limited by documentary-style objectivity. They tap into the interior lives of the characters with tremendous subtlety and originality. [22 Aug. 1997, p.36]

La Promesse is a compelling look at issues that - in a world where ethnic frictions grow more tense, even as national boundaries disappear - really are universal. Read full review

The integrity of the film, whose directorial team has collaborated on numerous Belgian documentaries, extends to its sad final moments, in which nothing is left neat and tidy. Read full review

Bleak and post-industrial, this is no easy film to watch. It hasn't a conventional image of beauty anywhere within its grim 93 minutes, being shot in harsh natural light that somehow plays up the grime and chill of back-alley life. But by the end, it's suffused with something utterly rare: moral beauty. [27 June 1997, p.D6]

The visual style and the natural, unaffected performances by a talented cast help create an atmosphere of verisimilitude that makes the story all the more powerful. [23 Oct. 1996]

La Promesse is a penetrating coming-of-age story, one that argues that adulthood begins with the emergence of moral convictions. Read full review

La Promesse (The Promise) makes filmmaking look easy. The movie is deceptively simple, a tight little drama about guilt and conscience in which the creators' strings are completely invisible. It's fine storytelling in its purest form. [31 Jan. 1997, p.27G]

The world of this film is like nothing most Americans have seen. But we know what it's about. It's about greed and guilt and how inconvenient it can be to have a soul. Read full review

La Promesse...presents an unflinching view of the victimization of vulnerable people, but the center of the film is not the immigrant experience. It is the portrayal of a father-son relationship and that turning point where a child must choose between a loved parent and his own sense of morality. Read full review

The theme could be trite or maudlin in lesser hands. Here, through the Dardennes' judiciously stylized way of telling the story, there is a real exhilaration in the film's ability to capture Igor's emotional dilemma. [6 Mar. 1998, p.C8]

La Promesse believes that decency is an innate human quality that can surface from any rubble. [16 May 1997, p.47]

The Dardenne brothers keep dialogue to a minimum but create strongly defined characters by letting their cameras linger on their actors' expressive faces. Their cast works small wonders with this extra-verbal strategy, and by the time the film's stunningly simple finale arrives, it seems both inevitable and marvelously serendipitous. [21 Nov. 1997, p.L34]