Director pays bittersweet homage to late actress

Luc Dardenne would have liked to work with Emilie Dequenne again

The tale of actress Emilie Dequenne is the stuff of legend. At age 17, she appeared in her first film and then found herself crowned at the Cannes Film Festival. The film was Rosetta – a harrowing tale of growing up in poverty in a post-industrial region of Belgium. The film was a turning point in the career of Duquenne, the Dardenne brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre that directed it and even on Belgium’s place in world cinema.

Dequenne went on to have a notable career in French cinema, playing in well over 30 movies and picking up regular awards for her acting.

“It’s really unfair to die so young”

Dequenne sadly passed away recently at the age of 43. For director Luc Dardenne, the pain is double. “It’s really unfair to die so young,” he told the daily Libre Belgique. “We all know what Emilie did for cinema, but we’ll never know what she could still have done.”

Unlike other actors that the Dardenne brothers worked with, Dequenne never appeared in another of their films. Dardenne regrets this. “She told us, ‘You’ll never work with me again as I’m still Rosetta for you’. She was right.”

Although they had thought of her occasionally, they felt she needed a strong lead role. “But now that will never happen because of this damn disease."

(Michael Leahy. Source: La Libre Belgique. Photo: Nicolas Landemard / Picture Alliance )