Dardenne brothers: “We felt the rhythm of the film was wrong”

“There is an American photographer who, every year, took portraits of his wife and her sisters,” Luc Dardenne tells me. “As they get older in the photographs they huddle together more. They become physically closer. They hold on to each other more.”So Luc and his brother Jean-Pierre have come together in this fashion? They are closer now than they ever were?“Ah, it’s like…” Jean-Pierre says and, as his English runs out, makes ambiguous gesture with both thumbs and both forefingers.

They need money from each other?“ No. No. Ha ha ha!” I mean they are scared.”If mortality is nipping at the film-makers’ heels they are putting a brave face upon it. Almost everybody who has interviewed Jean-Pierre and Luc – directors of such realist masterpieces as L’Enfant and The Son – has noted the pleasing contrast between the sobriety of the films and the gaiety of their creators. The Belgians could hardly be friendlier.“

Ah we remember Ireland so well,” Luc, the younger at 62, says merrily. “Many years ago we shot this film in Derry. It was very important to us.”The brothers did, indeed, help shoot Armand Gatti’s experimental Nous étions tous des noms d’arbres (sometimes titled Writing on the Wall) in that city back in 1982. Jean-Pierre received one of several cinematography credits. Luc was listed as an assistant director.“

I remember the poverty of the families – the Catholic families – in the Bogside. And they had so many children,” Jean-Pierre, now 65, says. “It was terrible. And the position of women surprised us. And the dominance of the Church? I remember the Protestants saying the Pope has red socks because he is a communist. You know? Ha ha!”A swerve in their careers We mention this not just to wrap ourselves in the flag. The incident marked a swerve in their careers. Raised in Liege, both received decent degrees at university – Jean-Pierre in drama, Luc in Philosophy – before setting up a production company named Derives in 1975. They initially worked on a series of documentaries that, though well-received, failed to make them any sort of name [ . . .  ]

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