The Unknown Girl

The Dardenne brothers are not the kind of directors one associates with genre fare, and while The Unknown Girl meets all of the prerequisites of their social realist oeuvre, it also plays as something of an ultra-low-key film noir. Dr. Jenny Davin (a brilliantly subtle Adèle Haenel) is a GP in Liège who becomes inexplicably entwined in – and consequently obsessed by – an unexplained death. Having ignored the buzzer at her surgery door only to find the unidentified woman mysteriously dead shortly after, Jenny is driven by guilt to investigate.

The stylistic flourishes of genre are nowhere to be seen, nor is the narrative vim. Patients come and go and Jenny goes on house calls, as the Dardennes continue to explore the commonplace difficulties of life for the working classes. Each patient adds to the tapestry of a stratum of the city’s life, and also to Jenny’s demonstrable devotion. Banal check-ups are punctuated by sometimes quite dramatic skirmishes with the local underworld, but it’s the icy grip of self-loathing and remorse that make Haenel riveting to watch.