‘Young Mothers’ tells the gut-wrenching story of breaking cycles of abuse
Teen girls struggle with their relationship to motherhood in this poignant film by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.
As Jessica puts her newborn daughter Alba to bed, she turns on “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” to soothe her to sleep. But the tone of the lullaby shifts from calming to heartbreaking as the teenager collapses sobbing on the bed in the other room, revealing that she too, is just a child.
“Young mothers,” written and directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, tells the story of four young girls who are new to motherhood living in a shelter in Liège, Belgium which helps them navigate the often cruel world. But more so, it tells the story of the complicated mother-daughter relationship and what it means to break cycles of abuse.
The film is primarily shot in medium close up on the main characters as if from their point of view, creating a feeling of closeness and making the viewer feel even more sympathetic to their struggles. The takes are lengthy, and the camera tracks alongside the characters, closing the distance from the viewer and pulling us into the story as if we’re walking next to them.
The Dardenne brothers background in the documentary was evident as the film felt like one at times due to this cinematic style, as well as because the characters were so well written and three-dimensional, validating the film’s win of the Best Screenplay prize at Cannes. The characters were also so well portrayed by the young actresses — remarkably so given that this was several of their first film experiences.
It is clear that all four of the lead characters — Perla (Lucie Laruelle), Adriane (Janaïna Halloy Fokan), Jessica (Babette Verbeek) and Julie (Elsa Houben) — ended up in difficult positions as a result of the abandonment or abuse that they faced at the hands of their own mothers in their not-so-distant childhoods. The film switches back and forth among all their lives, displaying the different ways in which they are grappling with their childhood trauma and how they are attempting to undo the wrongs that were done to them.
Jessica confronts her mother, Morgane (India Hair), about abandoning her as a baby, and vows not to abandon her own daughter. But it becomes clear throughout the film that the reason why she wanted to have a baby was to fulfill her desperate need for a family, and her desire to understand how her mother could have made the decision to give her up.
Her story culminates in a heartbreaking scene in which she finds Morgane and demands an answer, lamenting that she feels nothing when she holds her own infant daughter, Alba, before breaking down and begging Morgane to hold her. The scene is nothing short of painful. The performances are incredible. These two women who have only met twice before communicate their deep personal and biological connection through the intense eye contact, the tone of their voices and the intermittent silence between them.
The other girls are all in search of family too, but struggle with repeating unhealthy cycles. Perla is desperate to have a family with Robin, a juvenile delinquent and the father of her child, who abandons her and their baby. She leaves to try to find him, but briefly abandons her son at the shelter in the meantime.
Julie struggles with addiction, but promises her daughter Mia and devoted fiancé Dylan (Jef Jacobs), that she will “resist” for them because they are the only thing in her life that “feels true.” Both Julie and Perla talk about their own mothers, and the lasting impact their abuse has had on them, and the impact it had on their view of motherhood.
Adriane has a complicated relationship with her manipulative mother who wanted her to have a child so that she could have a fresh start and make up for the mistakes she made raising her. Adriane makes the decision to put her daughter, Lili, in foster care to give her a shot at a better life, writing her a letter to open when she turns 18, the explanation Jessica never got.
The film underscores the significant impact that familial connections can have on a person for better or worse. While their families of origin may have influenced them negatively, all of the girls are putting in an effort to give their children a better experience than they had. And as they all struggle alongside each other, they take care of each other, sharing cooking duties and supporting each other in times of need. The shelter serves as a supplemental family of sorts.
Naïma, the fifth mother at the shelter, is only in one scene, serving as a beacon of hope for the other girls as they celebrate her moving into her own apartment and getting a job. She is a manifestation of the characters motivations, but had she gotten more screentime and the audience gotten to know her backstory, the scene would have perhaps had an even greater emotional impact.
Still, though including more of Naïma’s story would have been a welcome light in the darkness of the film, providing a comfort to the viewer, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne choose not to allow this relief. The movie’s somber tone is meant to emphasize the reality of the girls’ situation. “Young Mothers” is a poignant, tragic story, about struggle and trauma. It is a painfully real and emotionally affecting portrayal of the difficulty of breaking cycles of abuse.