YOUNG MOTHERS
(Check out Chris Reed’s Young Mothers movie review! It opens January 9 in New York and January 16 in Los Angeles before a national rollout. Seen it? Join the conversation with HtN on our Letterboxd Page.)
The Belgian filmmaking duo of brothers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (Tori and Lokita) are hardly known for tales of uplift and hope. Instead, their work is marked by a searing approach to difficult topics. They do not flinch from grief and pain. Neither do they traffic in misery porn, however. Rather, their stories examine urgent issues of our time, set in the world of characters with limited agency who are often weighed down by past poor decisions, many of which were the result of limited options.
In their latest, Young Mothers, they stay on familiar turf, though the specificity of details is new. I am also happy to report that the movie allows its four principals a measure of grace. After harrowing journeys toward seemingly bleak destinations, the protagonists emerge from trauma with a glimmer not only of hope, but of possibility.
The place is the city of Liège, in Belgium, and the titular girls (mostly below the age of 18) are residents of a women’s shelter. One is still pregnant as the film begins, while the others have all given birth already and are now considering next steps. With one notable exception, they have no willing male partners in their lives, further exacerbating feelings of misery and loneliness. Fortunately, the older women who work at the shelter are kind and committed.
Jessica (Babette Verbeek) is the still-pregnant one, with a strong desire to connect with her own birth mother—who gave her up for adoption—before deciding what to do with her baby. Perla (Lucie Laruelle) has a boyfriend at the start, though one who has just been released from juvenile detention, and he is clearly not cut out for responsibility. She has her own demons, too, which include alcohol addiction. Ariane (Janaina Halloy Fokan) is the character most determined to give up her child to adoptive parents, mainly to keep her daughter away from her own (abusive) mother and stepfather but also to hopefully create opportunities that she never had. Julie (Elsa Houben) has a supportive boyfriend, whom she would like to marry (he wants to marry her, too), but her past drug addiction threatens to scuttle these plans. There’s also a fifth girl, Naïma (Sami Hilmi), but when we meet her she is on her way home, her conservative Muslim mother having finally relented and accepted her back after the out-of-wedlock birth.
Each actress delivers a heartfelt performance, the rawness of the characters’ desperation palpable from the very first scenes. Little by little, we grow to understand more of how each person found themselves in such dire straits, while also rooting for them to succeed. Their lives are anything but easy, yet the script—which won the Best Screenplay award at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival—never feels exploitative. Instead, we watch with fascination, and a lot of anxiety, as these brave young mothers navigate difficult terrain and come out on the other side stronger and, if not better for it, at least better than they were. Their resilience inspires.
– Christopher Llewellyn Reed (@ChrisReedFilm)
Music Box Films; Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne; Young Mothers movie review
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