TORI AND LOKITA

Reviewed by Sunchica Unevska

Towards: “TORI AND LOKITA”, directed and written by: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, starring: Mbundu Joely, Pablo Schils, Alban Ukaj, Tijmen Govaerts, photography: Benoit Dervaux, France/Belgium 2022

When life has no price

The brothers Jean Pierre and Luc Dardenne are able to see in people what we often don’t notice, they are able to confront us with so many, essentially, ordinary situations that surround us, but we are not aware of them, and they are even more able to make such (life or, in the case, migrant relationships) relationships in which all human misfortune is hidden, doing that so with such “lightness”.

“Lightness”, because it is about survival, “lightness” because you have no other way out, especially when you aren’t even aware of the consequences, “lightness” because someone thinks that in the situations in which you are most vulnerable can abuse you, he can play with you, humiliate and torture you, and for that he not only doesn’t pay, but also has no problem with his conscience.

Tori and Lokita (Pablo Schils and Joely Mbundu), a young boy and a teenage girl who come from Africa to Belgium, and ho in many ways are a very unusual combination, but they will manage to recognize each other on their desperate journey and find solace in each other, posing as brother and sister. But, while Tori will get legal residency papers, as he was declared a witch in his village and could be left for dead, until then Lokita is fighting all possible obstacles and interrogations to get his residency papers. Unfortunately, such a situation, in which they have no protection, makes them perfect prey for those who profit from the misfortune of others without to blink their eyes.

You can't but be moved to tears by their sacrifice, that care for each other, that need for the other, that solace that they try to give each other. They have been turned into a kind of symbols or, let's say, prototypes of all the evil in the world that has no color, no measure, no limit. Man is simply powerless before evil, powerless when he finds himself where inhumanity no bounds, where human life is worth nothing, where the human being is treated as nothing.

What can those that young people to do? The Dardenne brothers, as always, without any pathos, without salting the mind or condemnation, just show things as they are, when naive children find themselves in the claws of wolves, and they are not and cannot be aware of the seriousness of the situation in which they find. You can't but be moved to tears by their childish approach, that injustice, especially the powerlessness, especially the simplicity and sincerity, you can't but be moved to tears by the way their hope will be destroyed, their future taken away, without any responsibility, without any punishment.

And yet they are nobody's, and yet there is no one to care for them, and yet there is no one to protect them, and yet they are thrown into the fire, and yet they are left to the winds of life, and yet everybody can play with them, and especially those for whom nothing is sacred, at least the children who can be a source of extra profit... Well, even in the end, with the Dardenne brothers there is no drama, no tears, no revenge. There is only a bitter taste, there is disbelief, there is a powerlessness that hurts to the bone. How many such destinies are around us, how desperately they try to find a way out, to reach the dream or to reach that piece of happiness that we think is waiting for us at the end!

That piece of calm and satisfaction that we believe in, that we fight for, for ourselves and for our family, not sparing ourselves, just to get out of the hopelessness into which we are often plunged. But, it seems, desperation begets desperation, it seems there is no way out, at least not for those who have no chances anyway, there is no way out especially when those who want easy money are lurking from all sides, and there is nothing easier than taking advantage of people's misfortune. Desperation makes them believe in everything, forgetting that those to whom it brings such easy money will never give it up.

Such is the world, unjust and full of absurdities, where it seems that even human in man don’t exist. Because, it was lost a long time ago, when someone believed that some were better than others, when they believed that the chance should be grabed regardless of everything. After all, the price is not even important, no one comes after it anyway.