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Countless filmmakers have tried to imitate the Dardennes' formula of hardened realism and pointedly mysterious character motivations since the duo ascended to arthouse superstardom as the kings of Cannes, but nothing compares to the real thing. Their documentary-trained eye for essentials informs every aspect of their breakthrough film, from the largely handheld Super 16mm camerawork to the performances of Renier and Gourmet, then-unknowns who have since gone on to successful careers.

In most films, characters wrestle with morality with grandly melodramatic thrashings that are often accompanied by score or edited into montage, but the Dardennes convey an understanding that's simpler and more honest: that the act of making even the most wrenching of choices isn't much of an external show that lends itself to cinema. But the world that informs that choice, that's cinema, or at least the cinema of the Dardennes.

At the core of [the Dardennes'] approach was a commitment to thinking locally, and to understanding exactly how a working-class kid from Seraing would find his way to compassion for others and the rejection of his own father (Olivier Gourmet, who has also appeared in every subsequent Dardennes film, starring in 2002's The Son). In this sense, they were, and are, as exacting as Hitchcock.

The Dardennes view Igor as mostly a mystery — as they do Assita when she picks through the entrails of a chicken or visits a seer trying to discover where her missing husband is. The filmmakers treat both characters in a matter-of-fact way, but they don't claim to know much more about them than we do. Part of the excitement of La promesse has to do with the way they share their curiosity with us.