Cécile de France was an established star in 2011, but by her own admittance, when she was proposed to star in the Dardenne brothers' next movie "The Kid With a Bike", she embraced the role with the nervousness of a debutante. That says a lot about the reputation of the Belgian siblings' cinema: new, original, fresh but maybe more vital and more indispensable than anything Hollywood would deem worth producing, their films is the oxygen suffocating artists and audiences are severely needing.
Forgive the alarmist talk but cinema has entrapped itself in so many patterns that even the rebellious artsy attitude is predictable. At the end, audience get what they expect, so do critics and festivals and the circle of life goes on with the same hypocrisy. But when you hear the Dardennes talk about their movies, they insist on their aversion toward clichés or cheap emotions (hear, hear Spielberg): they can use scores, a few familiar set-ups but they'll never indulge to "tricks": their stories are simple in their straightforward and not too fancy directing but through their characters, the brothers drilled soils of human complexity with an equipment as effective as the truth and a certain respect to our intelligence.
As the title implies, the film centers on a kid, and so does the first frame: Cyril (Thomas Doret) holds a phone, seeking someone desperately, an unseen adult tries to dissuade him, the case seems hopeless but the kid resists, entrapped in the frame but freed by his certitude. Whoever he tries to reach matters less than the attempt itself, the film begins as strongly as "Rosetta": with fierce determination and in many Dardennes film, determination is triggered by a specific event, death, unemployment... what can eat that poor kid? What can be at stakes?
Enthralled by our curiosity, we follow the camera following him, riding his bike, escaping from youth-farm educators until we find out he's looking for his father, but his father is as unreachable as if he was a figment of his imagination, maybe he is... no, little Cyril is too smart, street-smart actually, to be that kind of child. Even when he found out his father left the apartment he used to live in, he escapes from his pursuers by hiding in a medical center and grabbing the first woman he sees: Samantha (Cécile de France). We expect her to become an important player in his life but see how coincidental and un-cinematic the encounter is, in a sort of truthfulness to life where random moments can make a difference.
And the bike is the incarnation of that existential banality, an everyday object that contributes to every pivotal moment (a tribute to "Bicycle Thieves" maybe?). It is the bike that indirectly leads Cyril to Samantha and from Samantha to his father, a restaurant worker. It's interesting that the father is played by Jérémie Renier who was the son in the Dardennes' first success "The Promise" and the immature young father in "The Child", he could be the older version of that father actually, fatalistic and coward. In a poignant turn of event, Cyril's rebellious attitude fades away and he follows his father as if both were connected via an invisible wire, trying to help him, sweeping every "sorry" by "it's okay". The father asks Samantha to take care of Cyril as he needs to restart his life... meaning without him. And since she has no reason to cover him, she does the right thing by confronting him to his son and responsibilities.
The first act was about a boy struggling to find his father and ending in the pivotal and heartbreaking moment where he discovers the truth. Telling the rest of the film with as many details would spoil the experience so let's say the story will be about a kid in quest for anything that would make his childhood meaningful, that can cancel out the feeling of sheer abandon, and anyone to provide him, if not love, true guidance. So what we have is a kid whose parameters of life are as messed up as clearly set-up and this woman we know nothing about except that she's a hairdresser, she has a boyfriend but nothing else apart from the fact that she saw the kid being rejected by the only person he cared about. It doesn't take a heart like Mother Teresa's to sense an impending doom over Cyril's frail shoulders no matter how tough he acts. He's a kid but not a kidder, his resourcefulness might become a double-edged sword and it doesn't take long before his bike leads him (through a bicycle thief) to a gang. Cyril's reaction against the thief earns him respect and a nickname that was going to be the original title: pit-bull.
A recurring theme in the Dardennes' riveting portrait of the 2000s, we catch "pitbull" at a crossroad of his life, like Renier in "The Promise" where he could either follow his father's footsteps or redeem himself by helping an African migrant. But once again, the resolution matters less than the way it highlights the flaws or virtues of human beings; something in the way the choices made by Cyril reflect the depth of his wounds and of Samantha's heart. This is a kid who needs help and a woman who wants to help but there is a gap to fill because some wounds don't heal easily. The film isn't much about love but a process of trust, a gradual realization of life priorities and also how relative notions of good and evil are.
Had the film ended ten minutes earlier, it would have been good enough but the last minutes shed a new light over the inner workings of the human soul and how indispensable the presence of an adult is for a kid. Adult and responsible, the film is almost a metaphor of the cathartic effect the Dardennes' cinema can have on audiences constantly infantilized by mainstream corniness or artsy pompousness.
Forgive the alarmist talk but cinema has entrapped itself in so many patterns that even the rebellious artsy attitude is predictable. At the end, audience get what they expect, so do critics and festivals and the circle of life goes on with the same hypocrisy. But when you hear the Dardennes talk about their movies, they insist on their aversion toward clichés or cheap emotions (hear, hear Spielberg): they can use scores, a few familiar set-ups but they'll never indulge to "tricks": their stories are simple in their straightforward and not too fancy directing but through their characters, the brothers drilled soils of human complexity with an equipment as effective as the truth and a certain respect to our intelligence.
As the title implies, the film centers on a kid, and so does the first frame: Cyril (Thomas Doret) holds a phone, seeking someone desperately, an unseen adult tries to dissuade him, the case seems hopeless but the kid resists, entrapped in the frame but freed by his certitude. Whoever he tries to reach matters less than the attempt itself, the film begins as strongly as "Rosetta": with fierce determination and in many Dardennes film, determination is triggered by a specific event, death, unemployment... what can eat that poor kid? What can be at stakes?
Enthralled by our curiosity, we follow the camera following him, riding his bike, escaping from youth-farm educators until we find out he's looking for his father, but his father is as unreachable as if he was a figment of his imagination, maybe he is... no, little Cyril is too smart, street-smart actually, to be that kind of child. Even when he found out his father left the apartment he used to live in, he escapes from his pursuers by hiding in a medical center and grabbing the first woman he sees: Samantha (Cécile de France). We expect her to become an important player in his life but see how coincidental and un-cinematic the encounter is, in a sort of truthfulness to life where random moments can make a difference.
And the bike is the incarnation of that existential banality, an everyday object that contributes to every pivotal moment (a tribute to "Bicycle Thieves" maybe?). It is the bike that indirectly leads Cyril to Samantha and from Samantha to his father, a restaurant worker. It's interesting that the father is played by Jérémie Renier who was the son in the Dardennes' first success "The Promise" and the immature young father in "The Child", he could be the older version of that father actually, fatalistic and coward. In a poignant turn of event, Cyril's rebellious attitude fades away and he follows his father as if both were connected via an invisible wire, trying to help him, sweeping every "sorry" by "it's okay". The father asks Samantha to take care of Cyril as he needs to restart his life... meaning without him. And since she has no reason to cover him, she does the right thing by confronting him to his son and responsibilities.
The first act was about a boy struggling to find his father and ending in the pivotal and heartbreaking moment where he discovers the truth. Telling the rest of the film with as many details would spoil the experience so let's say the story will be about a kid in quest for anything that would make his childhood meaningful, that can cancel out the feeling of sheer abandon, and anyone to provide him, if not love, true guidance. So what we have is a kid whose parameters of life are as messed up as clearly set-up and this woman we know nothing about except that she's a hairdresser, she has a boyfriend but nothing else apart from the fact that she saw the kid being rejected by the only person he cared about. It doesn't take a heart like Mother Teresa's to sense an impending doom over Cyril's frail shoulders no matter how tough he acts. He's a kid but not a kidder, his resourcefulness might become a double-edged sword and it doesn't take long before his bike leads him (through a bicycle thief) to a gang. Cyril's reaction against the thief earns him respect and a nickname that was going to be the original title: pit-bull.
A recurring theme in the Dardennes' riveting portrait of the 2000s, we catch "pitbull" at a crossroad of his life, like Renier in "The Promise" where he could either follow his father's footsteps or redeem himself by helping an African migrant. But once again, the resolution matters less than the way it highlights the flaws or virtues of human beings; something in the way the choices made by Cyril reflect the depth of his wounds and of Samantha's heart. This is a kid who needs help and a woman who wants to help but there is a gap to fill because some wounds don't heal easily. The film isn't much about love but a process of trust, a gradual realization of life priorities and also how relative notions of good and evil are.
Had the film ended ten minutes earlier, it would have been good enough but the last minutes shed a new light over the inner workings of the human soul and how indispensable the presence of an adult is for a kid. Adult and responsible, the film is almost a metaphor of the cathartic effect the Dardennes' cinema can have on audiences constantly infantilized by mainstream corniness or artsy pompousness.