Le Silence De Lorna

Often the most profound and gently moving dramas are the simplest. A complex, almost Byzantine backstory surrounds Lorna, the troubled central character of the Dardenne Brothers' chamber drama Lorna's Silence, and most surprising is that it neither weighs the film down nor interferes with its emotional magnetism, because the central arc remains so beautifully clean and concise.

Neophyte Arta Dobroshi stars as the title character, an Albanian woman in her mid-twenties, enmeshed in a bizarre immigration scheme in contemporary Liege, Belgium. She nurtures a simple aspiration: to move to Italy with her boyfriend, and purchase and run a snack counter. Bu...