You’re on My Mind
(Je pense à vous)
With Robin Renucci, Fabienne Babe, Tolsty.
Belgium/France, 1992, 35mm, color, 85 min.
French with English subtitles.
Five years after the notably avant-garde Falsch, the Dardennes’ second feature film, You’re on My Mind, abandons formal experimentation and returns instead to the path defined by the brothers’ earliest documentaries. The story of a steelworker in Seraing whose routine existence is shattered when he loses his job, You’re on My Mind follows the man’s swift descent into despondence that threatens to upend his family, especially his relationship to his wife. Admirers of the Dardennes’ later, mature style may be surprised by the lyricism, and even melodrama, of this film, providing a fascinating contrast with their subsequent efforts. Working from a script by veteran screenwriter and frequent Truffaut and Resnais collaborator Jean Gruault, the Dardennes embrace a mode of narrative classicism and work in a conventional mode they would subsequently reject.