Product Details

• Actors: Jérémie Renier, Olivier Gourmet, Assita Ouedraogo, Jean-Michel Balthazar, Frédéric Bodson
• Directors: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
• Writers: Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne
• Producers: Luc Dardenne, Claude Waringo, Hassen Daldoul
• Format: Anamorphic, Color, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Language: French (Dolby Digital 2.0)
• Subtitles: English, Italian
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: New Yorker Video
• DVD Release Date: March 19, 2002
• Run Time: 90 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B00005UK01
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #49,853 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "La Promesse" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

La Promesse draws on the considerable documentary acumen of its directors, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne (Rosetta), to prove a revelation in narrative filmmaking. Shot on the outskirts of an industrial city in Belgium, the film follows Igor (Jérémie Rénier), the 15-year-old son of a single parent named Roger (Olivier Gourmet) who rents squalid apartments to recently arrived immigrants, many of them illegal. As Igor struggles to hold down odd jobs while assisting his father in crooked dealings, the Dardenne brothers plunge the audience into the thick of difficult issues--immigration, cultural and racial bias, bureaucratic injustices--without overtly politicizing or diminishing any of their characters. When Igor promises to help a young African woman, he finds he must choose between loyalty to his father and his own conscience. The beauty is in how the Dardenne brothers seem to share in the viewer's curiosity about the film's outcome, having captured a world so charged yet unadorned you feel the surprise of each new scene alongside the directors. An extraordinary film that bears repeated viewings. --Fionn Meade

Product Description

La Promesse draws on the considerable documentary acumen of its directors, Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne ("Rosetta"), to prove a revelation in narrative filmmaking. Shot on the outskirts of an industrial city in Belgium, the film follows Igor (J?©r?©mie R?©nier), the 15-year-old son of a single parent named Roger (Olivier Gourmet) who rents squalid apartments to recently arrived immigrants, many of them illegal. As Igor struggles to hold down odd jobs while assisting his father in crooked dealings, the Dardenne brothers plunge the audience into the thick of difficult issues--immigration, cultural and racial bias, bureaucratic injustices--without overtly politicizing or diminishing any of their characters. When Igor promises to help a young African woman, he finds he must choose between loyalty to his father and his own conscience. The beauty is in how the Dardenne brothers seem to share in the viewer's curiosity about the film's outcome, having captured a world so charged yet unadorned you feel the surprise of each new scene alongside the directors. An extraordinary film that bears repeated viewings. "--Fionn Meade"

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Flat-out my favorite film of the 90s, December 1, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: La Promesse [VHS] (VHS Tape)

If you haven't seen this one, well... Its emotional impact on me was devastating. I saw it when it opened, and a friend and I, who are normally quite talkative after a good movie, walked at least two city blocks afterwards before either of us said a word. I compare it in style to "The Dreamlife of Angels" (hand-held cameras, naturalistic acting, a plot that unfolds gradually and builds to a harrowing finale, and no musical score) and in theme to, of all things, "The Apartment" (main character is waist-deep in wrongdoing but has a crisis of conscience that forces him to re-evaluate himself and his actions). Please find a copy somehow, or go ahead and spend the money here -- I don't want Amazon to get angry with me.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best of 1998, February 17, 2000

By 

Scott D. Allen (Santa Monica, California USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: La Promesse [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is not a warm fuzzy picture by any means, but it is film for people who love people and appreciate the higher instincts of mankind that transcend nationality, race, gender, and age. Does one follow instinctual bonds to family, or honor and committment to a worthy promise.

I absolutely loved this film...and so did my Parisian friends to whom I recommended it.

5.0 out of 5 stars Promise Keeper!, July 29, 2009

By 

Judith Johnson "JJ" (Memphis, TN) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: La Promesse (DVD)

Belgium documentary film makers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne deliver an unflinching glimpse into the horrors and exploitation of undocumented workers and the opportunistic people who prey on them in order to improve their own sordid, wretched lives. The directors also have an amazing eye for casting as all the actors are so natural that you think you are watching a documentary, rather than a compassionate piece of fiction.

The heart and soul of the piece is Igor portrayed by a stunning looking fifteen year old Jérémie Rénier (Summer Hours (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]) in an amazing first performance. Every good story needs a great villain and here it supplied by Igor's father Roger in a bravura performance by Olivier Gourmet (Rosetta [Region 2 Import - Non USA Format]). The lying, cheating, brutal Roger exploits everyone near him and even though he loves him, poor Igor is no exception.

The motherless boy has been pulled out of school under the pretense of an apprenticeship so his dad can use him to help run the family business of human trafficking. Absent of any moral teachings or decent role model, Igor is no angel himself:an expert forger of fake identities, purse snatcher, and lying to immigration officers. However, he is still a mechanically inclined 12 year old who snatches a few precious minutes to work on a motorized soap box type car with his friends and paints his dingy teeth with white-out to mimic the dazzling smiles of the Africans whose passports he is altering.

Igor is placed in an almost untenable position when he "promises" to care for the wife and child of a dying African man under his supervision. This promise causes an almost spiritual awakening in our young protagonist and forces him to make difficult moral choices for the first time in his own exploited life. Sadly, the film ends on a very ambiguous note but one hopes the protagonist will have a better, more hopeful future due to living up to his word.