Our reviewers select and review the best independent and foreign films on amazon.com, cd universe, and netflix

The Misfortunates (Belgium 2009, 108 min, dir: Felix Van Groeningen, cast: Kenneth Vanbaeden, Valentijn Dhaenens, Koen De Graeve, Wouter Hendrickx, Johan Heldenbergh, Bert Haelvoet, Gilda De Bal).

All Belgium is divided into two parts: both equally disgusting. Wallonia is the French speaking south and Flanders is the Dutch speaking north. Memorable moments in the south include the man made tourist hill that desecrates the battlefield of Waterloo. The north features stinky rail stations, diesel fumes, and one excellent national dish: French fries.

It is no wonder Belgium filmmakers produce mainly comedies. The whole country is a bad joke. In Paris they don’t tell Polish jokes, they tell Belgium jokes.

In this maze of train tracks, unpronounceable town names, and badly poured concrete; director Felix Van Groeningen introduces us to the Strobbes. Four grown brothers, their mother, and a thirteen-year-old son of one of the brothers make up this household.

Activates include beer drinking, swearing, dressing up as women, drinking, naked bike races, drinking, and trying to get that final gulp before the shakes hit you so bad you can’t hold your glass. Finding humor in all this is Van Groeningen’s art and he does it very well. At first you want young Gunther (Kenneth Vanbaeden) to escape. Later you think, escape to what? The adult version of Gunther (Valentijn Dhaenens) still lives by the railroad tracks and is poor, but now he is an author writing about this brilliant time in his life that we see in flashbacks.

How can you hate guys who make fun of the prim social worker sent to check on young Gunther when her name is Miss Fockaday? The film is like a Sunday afternoon in a roadhouse bar where you might as well join the party because they’re having such a good time.

Lorna’s Silence (Belgium, 2008, 105 min. dir: Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, cast: Arta Dobroshi (Lorna), Jeremie Renier (Claudy), Fabrizio Rongione (Fabio).

So many films about immigrants but so few that drill down to their vast emotional problem: loneliness. The physical hurdles are familiar, but the feeling of isolation is not. Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne explored it in Rosetta (1999) and here it is again. Rosetta lived in a trailer camp with an alcoholic mother. Lorna lives with a drug addict she has married to get her Belgium residency papers(she is Albanian).

Like all the Dardenne films, the bleakness of Belgium is the shadow over events. This shitty little country, caught between the French culture of the Wallonia, and the Flemish culture of Flanders is held together with duct tape. Like most other products made in Belgium, it is not very good.

In this land of blight, Lorna tries to move up the social ladder. This means dumping her druggie husband so she can get paid off to marry a Russian. Once he’s got his papers, she is free to live out her dream with a another dubious immigrant who makes a living cleaning the insides of nuclear reactors.

The wonder of the Dardenne brothers is they can take characters like Lorna and Rosetta and make us care. Their genius is in casting. Where did Arta (Lorna) come from? Kosovo is the answer: she is an ethnic Albanian. But she started acting as an exchange student in the North Carolina. Then she was thrown back into the war in Kosovo. Her family fled to Albania (that’s like fleeing to Siberia).

Before seeing the film, read these two interviews with Arta. The one from the Huffington Post will give you breathless details. The one from BIRN (Balkan Investigative Reporting Network) is less gushing but more has more facts. Lorna’s Silence is all about Lorna, so you ought to know all about Arta.