‘Young Mothers’ Review: Belgium’s Dardenne Brothers Adopt a Wider Focus for Their Most Humane Drama in More Than a Decade

Before turning their attention to ripped-from-reality social justice stories, Belgian brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne got their start making short documentaries set in working-class housing projects. They brought that same immersive, observational approach with them to their fiction features, reflected in the long-take handheld camerawork, gritty street-level locations and casting of nonprofessional actors that have become their signature. And yet, it’s doubtful that anyone would have mistaken a Dardenne film for a documentary … until now.

“Young Mothers” is the duo’s most convincing film yet, owing largely to the way they have widened the focus from one or two characters in crisis — the sort of urgency that drove everything from “Rosetta” to “Tori and Lokita” — to a loose choral form. Instead of presenting a single, nail-biting dramatic situation, the Dardennes’ no-less-engaging ensemble drama dedicates quality time to a quartet of young women — girls, really — under the care of a maternal assistance home in Liège. Deeply moving but never manipulative, “Young Mothers” is the brothers’ best film in more than a decades, since they tried incorporating movie stars Cécile de France and Marion Cotillard into their world.

Nearly all the faces here are unfamiliar — and every one is entirely persuasive. Reteaming with DP Benoit Dervaux and longtime editor Marie-Hélène Dozo, the siblings structure this latest, slightly unwieldy narrative as a series of more or less equally weighted dramas, interweaving the four cases as best they can (with a fifth example, played by Samia Hilmi, whose farewell party offers a ray of hope toward which the others can strive). The outcome requires a certain amount of multitasking from the audience, as with Michael Apted’s “Up” series or one of Frederick Wiseman’s epic institutional portraits, in which every moment matters, but it’s hard to say where things are headed exactly: toward tragedy, success or the status quo.

Pregnancy is the common thread between these four teens, who otherwise represent very different instances of children bringing children into the world. Jessica (Babette Verbeek) anxiously waits beside a bus stop, hoping to recognize the birth mother who put her up for adoption as an infant. It’s not until the steps away from the camera that we see this immature young girl is pregnant herself. She’s already picked out the name for her baby, Alba, and swears she’d never abandon her — a commitment to breaking the cycle by someone who desperately craves her own mother’s embrace.

Ariane (Janaina Halloy Fokan) has practically the opposite problem: Her welfare-dependent single parent Nathalie (Christelle Cornil) pressured her to deliver, promising to help raise the child, but Ariane wants a better life for her baby. Ironically, this girl’s maternal instincts are better than her mom’s, who dates abusive men and drinks to extreme, and that sense of responsibility is what drives her to seek out a well-to-do foster couple who swear to teach the child music, offering a potential she never had.

In most cases, the babies’ fathers are completely out of the picture, although two of the home’s residents are still negotiating how committed their boyfriends are willing to be. It’s implied that Perla (Lucie Laruelle) hoped that having a kid would strengthen her relationship with Robin (Gunter Duret), only to have the peach-fuzz delinquent blow her off as soon as he gets out of juvie, leaving Perla with only a half-sister (Joely Mbundu) to rely on. By contrast, runaways Julie (Elsa Houben) and Dylan (Jef Jacobs) seem relatively stable, but both are former drug users, which poses its own challenges.

Spelling out all these challenges surely makes the film sound far more miserable than it is. In fact, compared to the Dardennes’ previous few features — and their Palme d’Or-winning masterpiece, “The Child” — “Young Mothers” is positively upbeat. The script is full of setbacks, but it’s even better stocked with a sense of community, as characters step in to uplift one another. At the group home, the teens take turns preparing meals, and when one of them is overwhelmed or incapable, someone else invariably steps in to help.

That’s just one small example of the countless ways “Young Mothers” celebrates an institution where supportive yet firm social workers (played by Adrienne D’Anna, Mathilde Legrand and Hélène Cattelain) are available around the clock to serve as exactly the kind of role models its residents lacked in their own lives. Obviously, Belgium is fortunate to have such a place; most countries don’t. A comparable assistance program would surely make a difference in the United States, where pregnant teens no longer have the choice these characters did over whether to abort.

Any movie on the subject of teenage pregnancy carries a polemical dimension of some kind, with a number of impactful recent examples — most notably, “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” and “Happening” — adopting a distinctly Dardennian style to drive their messages home. It’s interesting then to see the Dardennes themselves taking a far more neutral tack, keeping things as open-ended as possible for the maximum range of reactions. The subject of abortion is frequently discussed, but the focus is exclusively fixed on characters who have brought their pregnancies to term.

If there’s a political statement to be extrapolated here, it’s that instead of thinking of young mothers as being responsible for their children, we should start thinking of society as being responsible for its young mothers.