‘Newly Born’ (2025), review | The most luminous work of the Dardennes, but ‘La Maternal’ did it better: the “misery porn” ends up getting out of hand

For my entire adult life I have heard the same thing about having a child, from “It’s the most beautiful thing that can happen to you” until “Not having children is selfish”. But of course, looking around, it is inevitable to identify it as an act of bravery: to the fear that caring for a child gives in itself, we must add that it will grow up in a world that is being destroyed at full speed, with obvious precariousness, skyrocketing apartment prices and an unpromising future for future generations. And, in this panorama, the Dardenne brothers have decidedperhaps for the first time in his filmography, break a spear for hope in ‘newborns‘ (‘Young mothers’).

Taking the Dardenne by the handle

The new film by the Belgian duo has many similarities with the Spanish ‘La Maternal’, by Pilar Palomero, but not in an atmosphere of rivalry, but almost complementary. It seems that both films dialogue through different languages, cinematography and scripts. While the Spanish one focused on the inability of a teenager to accept her new situation and on the mother-child bond to the rhythm of Estopa, The Belgians have preferred to focus on the range of possibilities that this premature motherhood opens up to its protagonistsfrom absolute emotional irresponsibility to those that embrace sudden maturity. And, at the end, with a ray of sunlight that illuminates the center.

One could imagine, after having seen more films by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, that the protagonists of ‘Newborn’ would all end up defeated in one way or another, forced to accept the worst reality among all possible ones. After all, they have never distinguished themselves, in films like ‘Two Days, One Night’, ‘The Boy with a Bicycle’ or ‘Tori and Lokita’, for giving their arm to twist the slightest regarding their black vision of the future. However, the most notable and surprising thing about ‘Recién Nadadas’, always moved by its humanism, is how it allows its five protagonists to have, in one way or another, an escape valve. There is pain, but it also puts a band-aid on it.

Sadly, the film is not able to get away from its initial idea and the stories it tells continually fall into common places, exploiting a kind of “misery porn” that is not as well balanced as it should be. And the film itself is aware that its choral pretension falls under its own weight, and there are some stories much more powerful than others. Maybe it would have been worth it, instead of making a general plan of everything that happens inside the center, focus on just one of these girls to grow their sentimental bond with the viewer. The intention, as always, is good, but it does not make us empathize with the protagonists and their intersecting lives.

Dardenne poison I want to die

The performances of its protagonists, however, are spectacular, especially for a group of unknown actresses like this one. All of them, without exception, manage to elevate the script in its most emotional and intimate moments, when the film really manages to shine: the encounter with a mother who wants to condemn her granddaughter to having no future, the teenager obsessed with her toxic ex-partner, the motorcycle ride capable of bringing smiles where there is only emptiness… The Dardennes hit the nail on the head by putting the microscope on feelings and relationships of their characters, but they fall into the cliché when constructing their now classic social commentary.

The film wants to talk about motherhood in poverty, abuse, toxic relationships, machismo, addiction, broken families and forced maturity, and it is an excessive burden for the viewer because the criticism does not go beyond mere formulation. By dividing the film into five different fronts, none of them are fully developed and it leaves the taste of a film at half speed, which needed much more exposition to become the captivating and rebellious piece that it really wants to be.

Indeed, ‘Newly Born’ lacks a backbone that unites all the plots, and, therefore, that unifies its discourse: what remains is a hodgepodge of situations that does not fully permeate a viewer who has already seen all of this before (without going any further, in ‘La Maternal’) since it is going to be difficult for him to scratch out anything new that goes beyond the sensitivity of its directors. That doesn’t make it a bad film at all, but it does make it the most scattered film of its directors.which fail to hit the points where they did in the past and only manage to get by when they air the plots allowing the teenagers to relate to each other beyond their individual plots. You can’t always be the best.

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