Did The Dardenne Brothers Deserve Their Prize at Cannes This Year for "Jeunes Mères?"

At the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, the Belgian filmmaking duo, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne won the coveted Palm d'Or for their coming of age film, Rosetta. Nearly three decades later they remain some of the Cannes's most favored directors, winning multiple of the festival's top prizes. This year they returned with their newest project Jeunes Mères or The Young Mother's Home, and shortly after took home the award for Best Screenplay. But despite the reputation of the directing duo, was this prize truly deserved or just an example of festival favoritism?

Jeunes Mères premiered at Cannes on one of the last days of the festival, and despite the acclaim of both directors, the world premiere felt strangely understated. The red carpet took place at 3pm before the sun even went down, tickets were available up until minutes before, and the Grand Lumière Theater wasn't even at capacity. The whole affair felt like it should've been a bigger deal than it was, but the film had practically no promotion throughout the festival and most people had no idea that the Dardennes even had a new film premiering.

I received a ticket to Jeunes Mères an hour before the premiere began, from someone who was not interested in seeing the film. I went into the theater having no knowledge of the plot and therefore had no clue what to expect.

The film follows four teenage girls, Perla, Jessica, Julia, and Ariane, who through one way or another have found themselves as new parents. While they share this one thing in common, their situations differ vastly. One is putting her daughter in foster care, another is desperately trying to get her father's child to step up, one is getting her life back on track, and the other is trying to reconnect with her estranged mother while expecting.

I saw over a dozen films at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and Jeunes Mères was far from my favorite. While I appreciated the diverse range of stories it was trying to tell, and the incredible performances from the cast, the film just felt...slow. It is well-written enough, but Jeunes Mères is largely just misery on top of misery on top of more misery. That's not to say that every film has to be optimistic, but after a while the movie became regrettably very draining. It is a long-winded, bleak film that just doesn't let up.

Thierry Frémaux, director of the Cannes Film Festival has faced criticism in the past for showing favoritism towards certain filmmakers and including the same directors every time they release a new project, claiming they are granted entry due to name recognition rather than the quality of their films. In his eleven years as festival director, Frémaux has managed to put on some truly astonishing film lineups, but unfortunately Jeunes Mères adds a bit of credit to these allegations of favoritism.

Jeunes Mères did not make a splash at Cannes, it flew under the radar for most festival-goers, but of course, attention does not always equal quality. After all, the film won for Best Screenplay, so how's the script. Unfortunately, the script isn't too much to write home about. Most of the dialogue is very casually spoken with lots of stated exposition. When compared to past films that have won this award like Portrait of a Lady on Fire, Leviathan, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Jeunes Mères just doesn't match up. Giving this award to The Dardennes just feels like an excuse to have the duo win the prize a second time.

Jeunes Mères is not a bad film by any stretch of the means. It is well acted with some powerful themes of family, love, and poverty, but the fact that it won one of Cannes' most coveted prizes seems more than a little suspicious. The film does not yet have a wide release date, but it will soon be up to the public to decide whether or not the Dardennes truly deserved the award...