Foreign Film Series: Tori & Lokita
Tori and Lokita is a heart-stopping thriller that casts an unflinching eye on the trials of the young and dispossessed. Like most of the Dardenne brothers’ work, Tori and Lokita leverages the irreducible nature of human dignity against the ever-worsening apathy of human civilization. The film’s threadbare story hinges on parentless children whose need for support leads them toward danger. The story revolves around two underage African immigrants who are posing as siblings in order to secure the older Lokita’s permission to stay as a refugee. Tori and Lokita live together in the same shelter for unaccompanied foreign minors. They deliver drugs together for the same awful drug dealer, and they give most of the money they make to the same violent smuggler who helped them get to Belgium in the first place. The kids have been drawn reluctantly into the criminal underworld to pay debts and send desperately needed money back home. This may be the Dardennes’ most emotionally engaging film in a while--a tragedy told with utter clarity, centered on protagonists entirely deserving of our sympathy and empathy.