“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.“ Continue reading “Dardenne brothers: “We felt the rhythm of the film was wrong”” →