The way the world works these days, there usually is an alternative solution that will get you the same results, albeit not legally. I may believe I have some street smarts, but I would be fooling myself if I did not think there are a lot of undocumented things happening around me. At present one of the hot political topics has to do with immigration. I had a crash course in the legalities of the issue when my niece became engaged to a wonderful man from France. Lorna, played by Arta Dobroshi (Late Bloomers, Magic Eye), worked at a cleaners, but hoped to open a snack shop one day. To get to her goal, she agreed to enter into a sham marriage arranged by local, small time mobster Fabio, played by Fabrizio Rongione (The Kid with a Bike, The Child). Besides the financial gain, Lorna would more importantly obtain Belgian citizenship. Everything  was going smoothly until her husband, a junkie, asked for her help in getting clean. At the beginning of this dramatic film, I was not sure where the story was going; I felt out of synch with it. However, I soon realized that is what the directors had in mind. Lorna and her husband were not so dissimilar after all. The range of feelings they displayed felt like I was watching a tennis match; going from dominance to weakness to manipulation. This film did not take a page out of the Hollywood handbook; it was a bare bones story that fully used its actors’ abilities. A raw tense movie, this Cannes and Lumiere winning film gave a glimpse into what I am sure has been a real occurence in life. French, Albanian, Russian with English subtitles.

3 stars — DVD